[josm-dev] Do we need some principles for JOSM interface design?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> 3. The editing should be, as far as possible, clicks of a single mouse 
> button and movement of the mouse pointer that does not move away from 
> the part of the drawing being edited. This is a perhaps a bit too ideal, 
> but it implies that it would be better if you didn't have to keep 
> clicking buttons off the drawing surface and you didn't have to use 
> modifier keys.

I dislike unnecessary mouse movement too, and find the modifier keys a
bit un-intuitive. Have no good alternatives though.

> 4. Mistakes should be instantly correctable. 

Ctrl-Z?

> 5. There should be a visual indication of what will happen next. 

Would like that too. At the moment I fear that this might slow down
everything too much, with the constant "find affected objects,
highlight and redraw" work.

> 6. The interface should prevent you making useless constructs. For 
> instance, a way with nodes ABCB or ABCDEB has no obvious use currently

ABCB is useless, ABCDEB isn't! 

> and so should not be constructed. This gives the opportunity to use 
> these "illegal" situations to streamline the user interface. For 
> instance, if you added nodes A, B, C to make a way, and you clicked B 
> again, it would mean that you were starting a new way (a side road) there.

Hm, the user would then expect that after ABCDE he can also start a
side road by clicking B but instead would make the way circular by
that.

> 7. The possibility of multiple ways sharing the same nodes should be 
> central to the editing, not an afterthought. 

Agree. 

> So if a road and an adjacent area shared nodes and you wanted to
> insert a new node in the road, it should be inserted in the area as
> well. 

Disagree - or at least there needs to be a way around that. Take, for
example, a tram line and a road running over the same three nodes and
assume you want to add a tram halt to the tram line: no reason in
inserting the node into the road as well.

> Now is the time to think what we really want, not what is 
> just adequate.

Strong rhetoric ;-) but in fact the time to think what we really want
is always, not just now. It's not that we can't throw everything over
in a month if we don't like what we see.

It might also be worth giving a thought to some (possibly pluggable)
special "mode wizards" that have all operations geared to a specific
purpose, e.g. filling buildings and areas into an existing road grid
with very little mouse clicks.

Bye
Frederik

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