[josm-dev] New GPX implementation

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Henrik Niehaus wrote:
> The use case of supporting the "GPX standard" is equal to the use case 
> of supporting GPX, in my opinion. Do it right or leave it be.

I was asking because it seemed to me that supporting a tiny subset of 
the GPX standard is, in my eyes, sufficient for JOSM - load a file and 
display it. I've tried GPXes from a lot of different sources and never 
had a problem.

If someone out there has a GPX file that cannot be displayed in JOSM and 
still conforms to the standard, then we should fix JOSM.

I don't, however, see a pressing need to support any and all extended 
GPX features. And neither do you, it seems.

So here's my suggestion, much like what Petr has said:

1. Since writing GPX files is broken beyond easy repair (if I understand 
you correctly), and since it is not part of the core JOSM functionality, 
let's remove that functionality from JOSM.

2. You build a plugin based on your code (let it be called "Advanced 
JOSM GPX Manager" or something), which completely replaces JOSM's native 
GPX handling, including reading and writing files, and probably also 
editing GPX traces (or if you don't want to do that, at least provide a 
solid foundation for doing such editing). Cross-check with the 
DirectUpload plugin whether the two should perhaps be merged. Many users 
would probably like a function that uploads only a part of the currently 
displayed GPX traces to the server, and things like that. You include 
the required Java 1.5 libraries in the plugin JAR file.

3. Once your plugin is used by many people and "stress tested", and 
maybe at the time we switch to Java 1.6, we can throw out all the 
existing GPX code in JOSM and merge your plugin into the core.

Does that sound like a plan that works for everybody?

Bye
Frederik

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