[josm-dev] Better History

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Igor Shubovych wrote:
> This demands completely changing of the OSM API.
> I only think if it is good idea to change the whole protocol just to make
> history more clear.

No, I wasn't suggesting any API change. I said:

> Ideally of course, the API would support such complex operations (so you
> could call an API function "split way" and it would be recorded in
> history as such). But this is not going to happen any time soon.

and then suggested that we could make the client upload detailed 
information about what it did.

For example, if you have way "1" consisting of nodes "a,b,c" and way "2" 
consisting of nodes "c,d,e". User now combines both in the editor. 
Editor would normally delete way "2" and add nodes "d,e" to way "1". 
Someone who later calls up the history of way "2" thinks: "What the 
hell, that was an important road, why was it deleted?"

If the editor would, before it deletes way 2, upload a new version of 
way 2 with a tag "note=this way is now going to be deleted because it is 
merged with way 1", and only delete way 2 after that, then someone who 
later looks at the history of way 2 sees what happened.

All without API changes.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"