[OSM-dev] JOSM thoughts

Brent Easton b.easton at exemail.com.au
Sun Jul 22 01:18:27 BST 2007


Imi,

Just some thoughts on JOSM after a week of intensive use.

I like the new layer feature, how you can click on a layer and only interact with objects in that layer. However, I think Nodes should exist and be selectable in all layers. This would allow you to create a new layer and then create new segments and a new way on the new layer using the existing nodes.  This could greatly simplify creating Areas using existing nodes.

In fact, JOSM layers could also be tied to OSM 'layer=' tags so that you end up with a JOSM layer for each OSM layer (unnamed:-1, unnamed:0, unnamed:1 etc). Creating a way in layer:1 will automatically add the layer=1 tag to the way. Tagging a way as 'layer=2' will automatically create layer:2 and move the way to that layer.

Currently, you cannot create a segment between two nodes if a segment already exists between the nodes heading in the opposite direction. This makes it next to impossible to create areas bounded by existing streets. This could be relaxed if the segments exist in different OSM layers. Segments don't support the 'layer=' tag in OSM, but this could be used locally by JOSM and stripped off if they are uploaded to OSM.

I think right-click to pan the map should be changed to ctrl- or alt- click, then right-click should bring up a context-sensitive menu of options to apply to the selected primitives. This should remove the need for the confusing series of question and answers when click on the create way button.

Shouldn't JOSM strip all tags from segments when it uploads them since OSM doesn't support tags on segments?

Cheers,
Brent.

____________________________________________________________
Brent Easton                       
Analyst/Programmer                               
University of Western Sydney                                   
Email: b.easton at uws.edu.au





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