field name abbrvs; why not full words?

[e-lo]

Question:

• I couldn't find an issue or discussion item where it was decided to change the field names to be abbreviations? What is the thinking behind this?

There are some plusses and minuses:

For Abbrvs:

• can potentially fit things into DBFs, cube, and other places with limits on spaces
• fewer characters to write

Against Abbvs:

• hard to remember which way abrr things (or is that Abbv?)
• less legible
• creates inconsistencies across other formats (i.e. osm, shared streets, etc)

[ssmith55]

The request was that field names be limited to 10 characters, for improved compatibility with formats that have limits on field names. We did the following:

• added a few abbreviations that we hope are obvious
• made sure that, within a table, first 10 characters of a field name are unique
  However, we are not limiting field names to 10 characters

[ianberg-volpe]

Commits that make these changes in the example files and conversion tools:
83ccc56 ec0fd32 9bad897 b83dc7f