Essen Developers Workshop/JOSM

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Contents

Intention

While JOSM is a cool editor and a great piece of software, it of course has some odds and ends. We'd like to improve it to give the many new users a better starting point. We also intend to reduce some of the questions that arise anew from time to time in the mailing lists.

Bugs (to be entered into JOSM trac)

  • Right mouse button press shows a rectangle, but it remains empty most of the time instead of showing the info requested
  • Tag-Editing: Keyboard dead. Appears frequently if the session lasts a while
  • Performance-issues when loading more and more data

Usability wishes

To flatten the learning curve, some things in JOSM could be improved. The intention is to reduce the need to read documentation (How do I install plugins? What the heck is MapFeatures? How do I use this editor?). If documentation is needed, it should be overseeable and well structured.

Consolidation of documentation (ask Imi)

  • Moving the JOSM docs of eigenheimstrasse.de to the OSM-Wiki (or the other way around)
  • Improving the Wiki structure, e.g. better linking of subpages

Installation

Installers cause work and need a maintainer. Even worse, we'd need several installers for various distros. As JOSM is frequently updated, it seems to be a bad idea to leave it up to the distros to package JOSM. One further issue: While a Windows (or even Mac) installer can install plugins, presets and settings to the user's home directory, this is very uncommon on Linux distributions. Thus it would be very cool if JOSM would have the most commonly used settings and plugins included into the binary. To keep the current flexibility, it would additionally be cool if the user could override the default settings and plugins by placing copies into his home directory.

  • Better Defaults
    • Draw arrows on segments should be enabled per default
    • Enable some of the important palettes per default (layers, selection, presets)
    • Include default plugins (like mappaint) into JAR or similar mechanism so users don't need to add plugins manually
    • If plugins cannot be included, make the installation of plugins easier, in the optimal case as an included dialog in JOSM
    • Enable them with reasonable settings by default, e.g. include a default elemstyles.xml (which optionally can be overridden by ~/.josm/mappaint/elemstyles.xml)
    • Such a mechanism could be useful for almost any configuration

Tagging

  • Where does the default-Tag "Abutters" come from (=>trac)?
  • Remember last used values for tags/per preset (an earlier version did already), except for the name tag
  • Dedicated way-tool with autoinsert feature. End with double click or enter, open properties-Dialog
  • Downloadwindow should be modal (seems to be Linux only. Win works? => Trac)

Presets

  • Tooltips for preset-buttons
  • Relative paths for preset images
  • Relative path to the presets file if it is a local file
  • Include default presets as created during the meeting
  • Presets are rather hidden. Place them in a menu with a quick things submenu (single shot presets for frequently used tags)
  • Choosing a preset trashes existing tags which haven't been set by the preset
  • Existing Tags should be read and displayed in the presets dialogs
  • We need i18n'ed presets. We can copy the default presets and translate them, but it would be better to have the translations in one file. E.g. <combo key="highway" text="Type:" text_de="Typ" text_xx="yyy"
  • Clickable URLs in preset dialogs (e.g. to link to the map features page)
  • Additionaly to check boxes, we'd like to have radio buttons
  • Disable particular presets depending on the data selected, e.g. don't offer node only presets if anything else than a node is selected (and the other way around)
  • Autoset attributes depending on tags, e.g. make motorway links automatically oneway
  • Smaller buttons in the toolbar, so more presets can be stuffed there at 1024@768

Creating ways

  • way - way creates "superway". Most annoying feature.
  • Thus Improve adding segments to an existing way, dropping or improving the annoying three dialogs
  • Rename the way tool to something like "combine segments"?
  • Adding a segment to a way should be more straightforward
  • Adding a segment to a way brings up confusing dialog (no, yes, yes)
  • Relative pics for presets
  • Better linking of docs
  • Autofetching incomplete ways
  • Reliable incremental loading of data without the need to save and reload data
  • Bessere Infopalette
  • Bei Standardaktionen nicht warnen ("Möchten Sie wirklich einen Weg erstellen?!?")...
  • Editing prefs currently makes the icons in the toolbar disappear

Mappaint (Nick Whitelegg?)

See JOSM/Plugins/MapPaint

  • Further line styles (dashed, dash-dotted etc.) which we can use for areas (landuse)
  • Show ways different than pure segments
  • Better visualisation if a selected item is a segment or a way
  • Create a list of tags of the loaded data and let the user hide certain tags (landuse, natural etc.). This is needed to avoid streets to be connected to administrative boarders etc.
  • Choose different colours for tagged or connected nodes to visualise senseless nodes
  • Fix the drawing of nodes so that that doesn't use the last selected way width
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