[OSM-dev] GSoC - Improvements to Vespucci

Toby Murray toby.murray at gmail.com
Mon Mar 26 09:39:24 BST 2012


On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Graham Jones <grahamjones139 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Jan,
> My personal order of preference for the features you suggest would be:
>
> Simple Long Click POI Menu - this would be a big step forward for  usability
> - I think the application has most of the fundamental features that I would
> use, but it takes too many clicks to do things.   It would be good to write
> the code so that the contents of the menu can be customised for other uses
> (ie very specialised simple editors etc.).
> Auto Save Function - I think I have lost things before, but don't know how.
> Undo function - Always good in case you make a mistake.
> Custom API support - this sounds potentially useful, but not something I
> have a need for at the moment.
> Offline Background Map - I am not really interested in this because I try to
> use vespucci when I am out and can look at the real world, so don't need a
> background map for reference.
>
> In terms of estimating how much effort is required, it really depends on how
> quickly you manage to get up to speed with the existing code.  This means
> that the first thing you work on will take most of the time, and the others
> are likely to be (comparatively) straightforward.
>
> I would recommend writing your application proposal as a 'base project' with
> maybe a couple of the features you are thinking of, which you can be
> confident in achieving, and identify the others as potential extensions if
> it goes smoothly.
>
> Hope that helps.

As a Vespucci user myself I have a couple of thoughts.

Any kind of save feature should save out to a file that can be read by
JOSM. I always have to go back and clean up my vesupucci edits after I
upload them. Sometimes it is great to be able to upload from the
phone. But sometimes I would rather just take the phone home, load a
file into JOSM and upload correct data on the first attempt. This is
in the issue tracker:
http://code.google.com/p/osmeditor4android/issues/detail?id=83

Also, anyone looking at the code should keep an eye out for this:
http://code.google.com/p/osmeditor4android/issues/detail?id=91

It's a nasty bug that I suspect some people aren't even aware is
affecting their edits. The first time I discovered it, I had been
mapping for over an hour and ended up having to throw most of it away
because my data had been completely corrupted when this bug was
triggered 30 minutes into my session. The only way to spot it is to
double check the tags on every new object you create.

Toby



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