[josm-dev] JOSM user interface

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> it will become much easier to move things around the map without
> meaning to.

Someone has suggested to put an upper limit on things that can be
moved at once, e.g. 50 nodes or so. That might help (but would again
require an override...)

> Solving this kind of problem is going to require some very careful
> feedback from JOSM. Possible ideas:
> 
> * Altered items appear with an obvious highlight, halo or other
> noticeable change in appearance until uploaded. This way, you can see
> a change the instance you've modified something and can undo.

That would not be too bad. JOSM of course has this status internally
(altered/deleted/created/unaltered) and could hint at it when drawing.
This could also prove useful if you ever find yourself in a situation
where you have to repair an area that has been vandalised or broken:
Extract a portion from the planet file in another layer, view the
current and the planet data, and mark some things from the planet file
for (re-)upload. Haven't thought this through though.

> * Something I quite often do is to delete fairly long ways. Usually
> this requires me to laboriously drag it to a clean bit of canvas
> (which can be some way off), zoom out and marquee-delete it. Now that
> we have no more segments, the action of the simple delete tool is a
> bit nicer than it was, but it still leaves stray nodes, many of which
> will be unwanted, lying around. Either by user preference or
> shift-modifier, I'd like to see untagged and otherwise unused nodes
> removed when the way is deleted.

Makes sense.

> * I never liked shift-to-extend-selection but
> ctrl-to-remove-from-selection. There is precedent for shift-click to
> toggle the selection state of an object. I would have guessed that
> shift-click would deselect only the item I click on, but I had to RTFM
> before I found out how to actually do it.

Someone (maybe you?) has written that as a comment into the trac
article, I think it makes sense.

> * There is a case to be made in such a revised UI for some helpful
> "action buttons" in the toolbar. These would include the new delete
> action already discussed, but could also have a "knife" tool to split
> ways at a node (or possibly to kill a mid-way segment thereby
> splitting the way and leaving a gap). Maybe also a "glue" tool to
> merge ways at a common node.

I guess we should aim at making the new actions into normal JOSM
actions that can then be placed anywhere in the tool bar using the
user preferences.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'