Proposal: Tweak the spec of routes.txt route_short_name and route_long_name for clarity

[Brian Ferris]

It's always been the case that in routes.txt, each entry must include either route_short_name or route_long_name or potentially both.  While this is sort of implicitly defined in the spec, we still have agencies that get confused from time to time.

I'd like to propose inserting the following sentence in the description field for both route_short_name and route_long_name, right before the existing "If the route does not have a short/long name..." sentence:

"At least one of route_short_name or route_long_name must be specified, or potentially both if appropriate."

Any thoughts?

Note: there are a lot of other things we could discuss about route naming here ; ) but for the purposes of this discussion, I'd like to stick to "at least one is required" semantics of the short or long name.  I'd love your feedback if you have thoughts on making this more clear.

Thanks,

Brian

[Aaron Antrim]

This seems like a good clarifying change.

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[Bradley Tollison]

+1

[Brian Ferris]

Ok, given the positive response, I'm going to start the clock on this.  Unless I hear objections, I will add this to the spec in one week (Apr 24).

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 6:36 PM, Ritesh Warade <ritesh...@ibigroup.com> wrote:

Seems like a good change.

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[Brian Ferris]

Ok, hearing no objections, I've updated the spec to reflect the proposed change:

https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference#routes_fields