Bonjour / Goeie moarn,
I’ve started a draft proposal that should make it possible to improve the way that bilingual names are displayed. I believe this will be particulary useful for Belgium.
There will be a new tag, “language:default=” where the value
represents the ISO code for the language. This tag can be applied to administrative boundaries to specify the default language format to be shown in name labels on maps.
For example, on the administrative boundary enclosing Brussels, you could add the tag “language:default=fr;nl”. This would mean that database users and maps should show both labels for two names; “name:fr=" and "name:nl=”. The map render can then show both these names, perhaps one above the other, or left and right. If they choose, the map renderer could even randomize the order of the two names when they are repeated (for example, on a long road).
If the “name:” tag is not available, the renderer or database user could fall back on the old default “name=*” tag.
Also, perhaps there are places in Brussels that are named in another languages, such as German. In this case, the individual map feature could have the tag “language:default=de”, which shows that it has a different default name format than the usual language format used in Brussels.
The complete draft proposal is available, with further detail and examples: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Default_Language_Format
I’d love suggestions for improvements, and examples where this proposal would be helpful
-Joseph