[OSM-dev] Potlatch ideas

[Richard Fairhurst]

Nick W wrote:

> One idea for Potlatch came into my mind when doing the new Freemap  
> maps.
> Namely, if a user wanted to be able to correct the status of the path,
> they could click on it then a Potlatch editing window could come up  
> with
> that way highlighted.

That's a nifty idea -  I like that. Currently the Potlatch SWF is  
called with lat, long and zoom parameters. I guess the best way to  
implement the above would be to also add the option of calling it  
with a way ID; Potlatch would then work out the lat, long and zoom,  
and highlight the way accordingly.

> A related point could be that if a way is corrupted (e.g. two nodes  
> rather
> than 1 at the join of two segments) it doesn't show up on the Freemap
> maps. What could happen is that a user could click on that  
> position, then
> Potlatch could come up allowing the user to "fix" the way by  
> merging the
> two segments.

I presume by the above you mean A->B and C->D where B and C are  
coincident, right?

To sidetrack a little: at present Potlatch doesn't attempt to fix  
ordering/direction of segments within ways. When it creates new ones,  
they're correctly ordered; but it won't fix existing 'broken' ones.  
(After all, sometimes there may be tags that rely on the 'broken'  
status.)

In a future version, I'm planning to add a little rotating arrow  
icon, which will show the direction of the currently selected way. So  
for a way that (overall) headed east, it would look like this: ---> .  
But if the way is broken, it'd look like this: -- -->. Clicking on  
the icon will fix a broken way, or reverse the order of a non-broken  
way.

It shouldn't be too much work to make this tool also look for cases  
like the one you describe.


At present, though, I'm deliberately not adding any features to  
Potlatch (other than serious bug fixes), because the major "todo" is  
to deploy it on the server, which inevitably falls on Steve - and I  
don't think it's fair to present him with a moving target in this  
way. Steve, any thoughts/news?

cheers
Richard