[OSM-talk] Serious JOSM problems

Lars Aronsson lars at aronsson.se
Wed Aug 2 07:42:54 BST 2006


I'm wasting my time trying to clean up line segments added by 
JOSM.  In the city Uddevalla, I had manually drawn a street 
passing through the city.  But now there were duplicate sets of 
line segments overlapping that street, each with far too many 
nodes and unnecessarily short line segments.  Apparently, somebody 
has made a track of the same street, let JOSM auto-generate line 
segments, and by accident uploaded these segments twice, without 
respecting the existing line segments.

Double line segments continue north from here,
http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?lat=58.3586&lon=11.9423&zoom=13

Triple line segments (my manual + duplicate JOSM) are found here 
and going west, 
http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?lat=58.3509&lon=11.9335&zoom=13

I guess this mistake was done by a beginner, and I don't want to 
blame that person.  I blame the software that didn't stop it.

Automation and increased productivity should be a good thing, but 
the current JOSM behaviour is unacceptable. I propose the 
following restrictions:

1. Auto-generated line segments should never be inserted within 50 
   metres of existing nodes or line segments.

2. Auto-generated line segments should never be inserted if they 
   are shorter than 50 metres.

With these restrictions, automation can still save a lot of work 
for long country roads, but dense city areas, sharp curves and 
junctions must be drawn manually.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se




More information about the talk mailing list