[josm-dev] Suggestion: entering tags in combobox

Igor Brejc igor.brejc at gmail.com
Fri Oct 26 19:21:45 BST 2007


Hello,

First of all congratulations on good work. The user interface has become 
much friendlier since the 0.5 API switch.

But I have one grievance: the combo box for entering tag keys and values 
has become a real pain in the ***. Instead of allowing entering two or 
more starting characters of the wanted value, you now have to enter the 
first character, and then if the offered value does not match your 
expectation, you have to use cursor keys to select the value you need.
On the surface this doesn't look like a real problem, but it is really a 
classic case of a badly designed user interface. Why? The reason is that 
values offered by JOSM are those which are present in the loaded OSM 
data, so the behaviour of the interface depends on the actual loaded data.
This leads to inconsistency, example: I want to enter the tag "area = 
yes". I type 'a' and "access" is offered. I then have to use control 
keys so select the actual "area" tag. But if the "area" is the only tag 
starting with 'a', then the cursor keys are not needed
This system is good if you have tag keys which differ in the starting 
character, but this is rare (examples: access, area, aerialway..., 
landuse, layer, leisure...).
I liked the old system of entering the starting characters until the 
JOSM found the only matching key. And the old system also worked nicely 
for tags with unique starting characters, since you only had to enter 
the first one.

Best regards,
Igor




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