[josm-dev] Tagging Presets

David Groom reviews at pacific-rim.net
Wed Oct 17 01:29:27 BST 2007


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frederik Ramm" <frederik at remote.org>
To: <josm-dev at openstreetmap.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 11:12 PM
Subject: [josm-dev] Tagging Presets


> Hi,
>
>    JOSM revision 399, which can be downloaded from now on, has a
> built-in palette of "tagging presets".
>
> Many probably don't even know tagging presets. Tagging presets are a way
> to wrap one or more tags (key/value) into a nice, named preset with an
> icon. Not all key/value pairs must be fixed; they can also be flagged as
> "ask user" (either free-form text input, or combo boxes, or checkboxes);
> when the user chooses a preset, a dialog pops up and the object is
> tagged accordingly.
>
> The cool thing about presets is that they can be fully configured by way
> of an XML file, and multiple such files can be combined. JOSM can even
> load these preset definitions from web sites.
>
> The feature has been available in JOSM for a long time but was very
> under-used. I believe that, while presets make things especially easy
> for newcomers, even the old JOSM hands will find it an improvement to
> (for example) have a on-shot button for a post box or so.
>
> I have now incorporated a presets.xml file and matching icons created by
> Christoph Eckert into JOSM by default, in the hope of making the feature
> better known and enticing users to play with it and create their own
> presets. I also hope that we will be able to build similar improvements
> for the creation and maintenance of relations.
>
> If you download the latest JOSM you should see a new "Presets" menu from
> which you can select stuff. Everything in the presets menu can also be
> be placed in the tool bar. In addition, there's still the old presets
> drop-down in the "Properties" dialog but that will soon vanish.
>
> If you don't like the presets menu you can either disable it in the
> preferences dialog, or if you want your presets differently, you can
> disable the default and make your own. (You can get the default
> presets.xml file from SVN or just extract it from the jar file.)
>
> If you read the newbies list and think this feature is good enough to be
> announced there, feel free to do so.
>
> Bye
> Frederik

Frederick I think its great that these default presets have been added to 
the JOSM installation, I think that in the past presets have probably been a 
very underused facility in JOSM,  perhaps only used by "power users" who, it 
might be argued, are the very people least likely to benefit from them.

I already have a presets file which I have been using, and understandably it 
differs slightly from the default, so I have chosen to load both the default 
and my own.  It would be nice if where I have a group in my own presets file 
which matches a group in the default presets file, then the default does not 
get shown in the list of presets. For instance I currently  have two groups 
for "waterway", one from the new default list, and one from my presets file, 
which also includes waterway = riverbank.

As a reminder to anyone who wants to create their own presets file, 
instructions can be found at 
http://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/TaggingPresets

David 






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