[josm-dev] make slippy map a core feature

[Sebastian Klein]

Dave Hansen wrote:
 > Have you tried a recent version?  For me, it is the single fastest way
 > to browse the slippymap.  It's way faster and more responsive than any
 > browser.  It also has features that allow you to tune the quantity of
 > tiles that it keeps in memory.  It's not a direct size limit, but it
 > should let you have control. 
 >

Yes, I have the recent version.
After making myself familiar with it a little more I have to admit it's 
not that bad. :)

These are the problems I encountered:

 * When a new area is loaded the entire map is colored red (with some 
strange stripes at the border). Then after 10 seconds, it says 'pending 
download', and at least the data layer is now visible. After further 4 
second the first tiles are shown. The CPU is at 100% for this time.
  In contrast to that, the download dialog shows the tiles with no 
delay. Furthermore, without the plugin, the data layer is shown immediately.

 * Moving the map is quite sluggish.

 * For many zoom levels the text is somehow blurred and sometimes not 
readable. This is because the images need to be resized to the given 
zoom level. I don't know how to avoid this, maybe some fine tuning could 
improve the situation.

 >>> Too decrease the network traffic one would then need a disk cache, but
 >>> make the tiles expire after approx. one hour and on demand.
 >> ... and *not* change zoom levels automatically ;-)
 >
 > I thought this was already a feature, but I'd be happy to go back and
 > revisit it.  To me, it doesn't make a lot of sense to do this.  How do
 > you use it that this is important?
 >

One could add a checkbox to the right click menu of the layer, that 
allows to turn off autozoom. I don't see how this would be particularly 
useful, but why not...


Frederik Ramm wrote:
 > Why do you want to work with it at all? [...] Plus, the slippy map 
tiles are so colorful that it is difficult to read anything drawn on top 
of that.
 >

I would use it to review my gps traces. This can be done by some other 
application (i. e. prune), as well. But as I have to load it in JOSM 
anyway, it would be nice to have slippy map background.

Additionally, if there was an advanced disk tile cache, one could easyly 
load the tiles of the holiday region at home and then use it offline.

If friends ask you to show them the traces, and then you have a black 
area with some dots, it's not very impressive. :)

___

Sebastian