[josm-dev] JOSM Modeless???

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> Another example is adding 
> multiple nodes to an existing way.  I have to click the Draw Node 
> button, then place the node, click the Select button, click in an 
> empty spot to unselect the node just created, then start over with 
> clicking the Draw Node button. 

No, no, no ;-)

Instead of clicking the select button and clicking in an empty area,
you can just hit the "u" key while in draw mode to unselect all. I
would have preferred to make "esc" unselect all but was unable to
register that keystroke for some dumb reason so settled on "u".

But you don't even have to unselect all; just hold the "shift" key
while placing your nodes and they will be placed without creating a
new way. Holding "shift", you can insert any number of nodes into any
number of existing ways.

Only thing you can't do yet without changing into select mode is
*move* the node just placed; I think this is probably very common
(often you place a node just because you want to make the way more
curvy) and it would be great if we found a way to eliminate that mode
switch also.

> I'm not trying to criticize, just trying to point out 
> areas for improvement.  There are several areas where I find I have 
> to do a lot of mouse clicks to do one thing.  I guess I should just 
> discuss them here one at a time.

Most things you have found until now were not so much flaws in the
editor but flaws in communicating its abilities to the end user. JOSM
documentation needs to be improved a lot. When I make enhancements, I
usually document them threefold: first in the code, then in the commit
comment for SVN, and then, often, also in a mailing list post. I don't
have the energy to also write everything up in the Wiki although I
really should. It would be an immense help if someone like you, who in
many ways is the typical user - at first confounded by a lot of little
things and then being told, step by step, how things could be done
differently to make it easier for you, could somehow make his personal
learning curve into something that benefits other JOSM users by adding
to the existing documentation. It's all in the JOSM trac wiki at
http://josm.openstreetmap.de/ and you don't even need an account to
edit.

> Actually this is perfect.  I don't even have to go to the menu to see 
> it!  The next step would be to make select work without making tiny 
> moves to the thing selected...

There is a largely undocumented configuration option that you can set
in your preferences (via the "Einstein" button), it's called 
edit.initial-move-delay and has the number of milliseconds before
dragging something is counted as a move. Defaults to 100, but if you
set it to something like 500 you should see a decline in accidental
moving.

Bye
Frederik

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