Talk:JOSM

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Discuss the JOSM page here. For bugs, ideas, suggestions, see there.


JOSM page cleanup

  • Update it to split it out, it's all got FAR to big
  • link to all the videos on showmedo.com
  • split out the installation and running with more memory (-xmx or whatevre it is) with screenshots and really good guides to separate OS specific pages like JOSM/Linux and JOSM/MacOs etc
  • Search for common terms hits too much fluff. Create specific MW namespace? eg: Key and Tag namespaces.

The above are some ideas from User:Steve.

This page is one of the key WikiProject Cleanup issues right now (a key area where the wiki is failing to deliver important information effectively to new users)
In relation to Steve's suggestion of splitting up the page, it's worth taking a look at what the germans have done: DE:JOSM is just a quick description with link to DE:JOSM/Anleitung (the guide) which then breaks it down into six different tabs. Nice hey? So we should probably just translate that back in to english!
Let's not forget we also have some wiki help documentation at http://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Help Historically I think imi created a fair amount of documentation there, and this wiki just had a brief intro page. These days we've built up much more JOSM related bumf on this wiki, so it starts to look a bit odd having that separate wiki. That wiki doesn't show up in search results within this wiki of course, although on the flipside the simple solution to steve's comment "Search for common terms hits too much fluff" is to go search the JOSM wiki :-) I can see one reason for having it still is to create the context-sensitive f1 key help info for JOSM. This involves separate itty-bitty little pages for every screen of the JOSM GUI, so taking this 'split out the page' idea to extremes. I think here on this wiki we'd do well to limit ourselves perhaps to six subpages as the germans have done.
-- Harry Wood 12:53, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
I suggest the following pages: JOSM/MacOS, JOSM/Linux and JOSM/Windows for OS specific information, JOSM/FAQ and JOSM/Getting Started for help and introduction. --Skippern 16:07, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I've looked at the German tabs and they require a lot of code on each page. I have therefore had a play and created a template to create tabs (you just need to titles for each tab you want, the page it links to and the selected tab). This makes it much easier to create tabs. example: User:MarkS/JSOM/Intro. However, when thinking about how this would work on JSOM I'm not so the tabs really works. In the example I've set up a single tab for installing JSOM, but the idea above (which is a good one) suggests 3 install pages one for each O/S. The tabs doesn't really handle this well (and it can't do tabs in tabs for example). So it might be better to have an index table across the top of each JSOM page splitting documentation into a few main categories (like the tabs) but listing the more important sub categories in the table. I might have a go next week --MarkS 19:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I've started work on JOSM/Guide.
Regarding installation details, my intention is to farm that off onto a page which is not even one of the tabs. It can still be linked, but it really isn't important. 90% of the target user-base can "install" JOSM by double-clicking the jar file. End of story. For those people, having the rest of that information is confusing clutter.
Regarding tab templates. Could be good, but it works pretty well without on the 'DE' version. That's what I'm modelling it after. Fannying around with templates is not the main challenge here.
The main challenge is to the write simple concise text (a user guide!) without it descending into a collaborative mess
-- Harry Wood 16:15, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
OK. It is done. JOSM/Guide and JOSM/Installation now cover all of the points which used to be messing up this JOSM page. I think that looks pretty good. Lets see how quickly it gets messed up. -- Harry Wood 00:53, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Back in 2009 when this was being discussed, the JOSM install instructions for Gentoo (originally on page Gentoo) were tagged with a suggested move to JOSM/Gentoo but were never moved. I'm about to move it and reclaim the Gentoo page for the actual Distro (as is the case for other distros) and will move the JOSM related page to JOSM/Gentoo as suggested. There is some useful gentoo-specific info there relating to the overlay. I will add a link to the moved page on JOSM/Linux and will leave it to the JOSM experts to clean it up from there. See the Talk:JOSM/Gentoo page for my reasoning. Geekasylum 07:55, 20 September 2012 (BST)


Resolved: marked as cleaned up in header of that section, so marking as resolved Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:48, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Help Forum

I haven't been able to find any "official" place to post questions about JOSM. Is there one? If not, I think there should be one,maybe in the form of a forum, with a link provided on the JOSM wiki page and official JOSM website. -Oleklorenc 05:43, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

help.openstreetmap.org is a good place to get your questions answered. You could add a JOSM tag to your question
There's also a 'Questions & Answers' section on the forum.openstreetmap.org.
A long time ago I suggested that the forum should be split into more topics, one of which would be JOSM [1].
-- Harry Wood 14:54, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Icons in JOSM

I have been using JOSM and have noticed that there are a few icons missing for places and use. Is there any way to submit alternatives and guidelines?

See on JOSM site, you can post it as a trac ticket I think. --Skippern 10:37, 18 October 2010 (BST)

I've also noticed that the .jar file in which JOSM is distributed contains no system icon for use in GNOME or Microsoft Windows. The icon file is needed for it to show up as a unique application in the Applications Menu and on the panel ("task bar") tab when JOSM is running. Although there is no way to "embed" an icon in a .jar file like one does to a Windows executable, one can create a Windows Shortcut or GNOME launcher that links to a suitable icon file. Recently, I stumbled upon a discussion on the 'net that hinted at copyright issues when combining the OSM logo with a cup of steaming coffee ("java") or the old "Duke" Java mascot to create the JOSM logo. (Is this true??) I created my own from SVG elements I found here at openstreetmap.org and on the Web, using Inkscape. My preference in GNOME 2 is to use SVG icons, since they scale smoothly and only one icon file is needed for the full range of icon sizes. If static PNG icons are needed, Inkscape can export them easily in the full range of pixel resolutions, and, if needed, one can use a program such GIMP to convert the PNG images to .ico format for Windows. — User8192 (talk) 00:24, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Resolved: Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:48, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Java 7

Hi, have any of you other editors experienced trouble using JOSM after you updated to Java 7? Well, I have, and I wasn't pleased that it wasn't written anywhere except for around 4 forums on OSM. Now I am using JOSM in Java 6 and it works perfectly. Could you please document it somewhere more official so that people who have this problem can get it fixed?

Thanks, David. S 01:55, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Can you link forums where this problem is discussed? I don't see it. Only discussion I found was this one more about a javaFX problem -- Harry Wood 13:24, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
You could open a ticket at JOSM site if not already done, that way you communicate directly with the developers about the problem. --Skippern 13:32, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
Hi again, other people have already opened tickets about this problem. Here are some the links that helped me fix the problem I had.
[2] [3] [4] [5]
Thanks, David. S 04:26, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Resolved: Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:47, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Feature request: coordinate formats for download

[I can't see any mention of where best to raise feature requests; please point me to a better venue if there is one]

The "Download/ areas around places" dialogue in JOSM accepts coordinates in the format "52.55887, 1.57237". It would be good if it also understood other common formats, such as "52.55887°N 1.57237°E", for convenience when copying and pasting them from elsewhere, please. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:24, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

@"best to raise feature requests": there http://josm.openstreetmap.de/newticket --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 16:04, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
Thank you; done, at: http://josm.openstreetmap.de/ticket/9493 Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:29, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
Resolved: Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:47, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

downloads: image in list

Regarding https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=JOSM&diff=prev&oldid=1075474 vs. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=JOSM&diff=1075884&oldid=1075474&rcid=&curid=1119 : It is semantically more expressive (it is a list of download alternatives and the image belongs only to one of the alternatives) with the inclusion and I do not see that this "looks weird" (Tordanik). But, well, as you like. ;-) By the way: you also reverted my change from image map to the simpler to read wiki syntax. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 23:20, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm interpreting the semantics a bit differently. In my opinion, it's a "button" for the recommended download, followed by a list of all available downloads with explanation. And I'm surprised that don't see a problem with the aesthetics of an unbalanced list where one item contains a big image and takes a lot more vertical space than the other items, but I guess that's subjective.
I've restored the wiki syntax for the image, though. I had reverted that by accident. --Tordanik 19:32, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment and the partly restoration. Hmm, well, if the button should not be a part of the download options, then the list misses an intro text what this list is about (e.g.: <image> More versions of JOSM are available … <list>). I thought the text before ("You can download JOSM from the JOSM homepage either by browsing there or by clicking the following ... ") should be this intro.
I had changed the list in a similar way also on two other JOSM pages. Of course, I will revert it there too as soon as it has become clear here that the old state is better.
I am interested for more opinions, although the download list setup should really not be consuming too much of our time. :-) Happy mapping! --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 20:05, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
In my opinion, the current situation (with the introduction applying both to the button and the listed links) is sufficiently clear. But I agree with you that this small difference is really not important enough to discuss it at length. I leave it to you to resolve it in whatever fashion you prefer. --Tordanik 01:43, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Keyboard shortcuts S+1 vs. alt-1 (toggle visibiliy)

I don't understand why shift-S + 1 toggles the topmost layer, while alt-1 toggles the bottom-most layer? Is this by design, or is this a bug? (On OS X.) Thanks! Bjohas (talk) 09:20, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Reporting bugs is done as described at https://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Help/Action/ReportBug I will mark this as resolved as it seems clearly stale.
Resolved: Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:47, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Automatic version

On wikipedia the version number is automatically pulled from wikidata (Q12877). Is this possible in this wiki too to avoid the monthly updates of the version in this article? --Klumbumbus (talk) 15:17, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Bookmarklets!

This is the front wiki page of JOSM. All wiki pages should be written in clear, simple language for the benefit of newbies who will always be the group who look up wiki pages the most.

So what the hell is a section on Bookmarklets doing here?!? --DaveF63 (talk) 19:55, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Wiki is used not only by newbies. Maybe bookmarklets section should be better described or moved further down, but "not useful for newbies" is not a reason to remove it. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:44, 14 July 2021 (UTC)