Comparison of editors

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Contents


JOSM

JOSM screenshot, showing photomapping features.
Summary
JOSM offers a large set of features and useful tools for a wide range of editing styles: It will either read in GPX tracks from your hard disk, or download them from OSM. Aerial imagery can easily be downloaded as a background for tracing. JOSM also supports photo mapping and audio mapping. Once you have completed your edits, you can upload them to OSM.
Pros
  • Fast fluid panning and zooming. Near-infinite zooming for super-precise mapping.
  • Can work offline using downloaded data files, and can work with local photo and GPX files
  • Advanced editing functionality e.g. make nodes of a roundabout into a circle.
  • Bing and other aerial imagery immediately available as backgrounds for tracing.
  • Highly configurable and extendible via plugins.
Cons
  • The finer points of the interface take a while to learn.
  • It requires Java 6 to work (not a big problem for most people)

Potlatch 2

Potlatch 2 screenshot. Showing background imagery
Summary
Flash online editor.
Pros
  • It's right there on the 'Edit' tab
  • It allows quick easy immediate editing. Map changes can be sent back to the server as you make them.
  • Bing and other imagery immediately available as backgrounds for tracing.
  • GPS traces available as a separate layer
Cons
  • It's not intended for power users (who are already excellently served by JOSM) or those who want the speed of a desktop client.
  • Zooming and panning prompts a map fetch (not as fluid)
  • photo mapping and other file accessing features are not possible
  • Requires Flash (not a big problem for most people)
  • It is not possible to work fully offline

Potlatch 1

Summary
Old version of the Potlatch editor offering quite a different editing experience, but it has similar pros and cons as the current Potlatch 2.
It is still available on the edit tab (hover over the tab with your mouse).

Merkaartor

Merkaartor-rotterdamwest-reduced.png
Summary
Merkaartor is a small editor for OpenStreetMap available under the GNU General Public License and developed using the Qt toolkit.
More information, screenshots and download
Pros
  • Has some unique features like transparent display of map features like roads and true curved roads.
  • Intuitive user interface
  • Binaries for Windows, Mac OS X and some Linux platforms is available. Source for the rest.
  • Easy to set up satellite imagery from Yahoo or any other WMS source.
  • Tag styles can be customized
  • Save rendered maps as SVG or bitmap graphic
Cons
  • Merkaartor is under early development, which make new and exciting features available only by grabbing the source.
  • Albeit under development (and it's not bad at all) it is very memory hungry and can freeze the machine while page-swapping (lots of disk activity)

Quantum GIS

Pros
  • Very comprehensive GIS program
  • Free
Cons
  • Not focused on OpenStreetMap editing

ArcGIS

Summary
Esri has released a plugin for editing OSM data.
Can be downloaded from: http://esriosmeditor.codeplex.com
Pros
  • Industry standard GIS Program
  • Very comprehensive GIS capabilities
Cons
  • Expensive
  • Works only with ArcGIS 10
  • Editing relations are not supported

See also

Retrieved from "http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Comparison_of_editors"
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