[josm-dev] Best practice: offline mapping?

[stefan at binaervarianz.de]

Hi,

I'm planing to do a longer holiday abroad and will take my GPS and
openstreetmap with me.

I will probably find a lot of new things to map, but I won't have an
internet connection at hand.
Does anybody have some advice on how to keep track of things to add?

I normally add points with notes directly on my GPS (eTrex), but that's
very time consuming, I can't do it while driving
and I only can add very short notes. I usually get frustrated with the
on-screen keyboard within 1 or 2 days and subsequently stop taking
notes.

Only mark numbered points would be faster and easier, but I would have to
keep notes on another medium (paper notebook, netbook). 
Merging these two data heaps will be time consuming afterwards.

As I have a netbook with me which could run JOSM, I could edit live or at
least at the end of each day. This would keep the frustration level low.
But here is why I ask this here too (and not only in my openstreetmap
diary): Is it possible to download the osm data for my travel region
beforhand,
make edits to it (or to a new layer), and than merge these data back into
the (possible changed over time) osm data on the server?

Is the conflict resolution/checking engine usable to actually fix the
conflicts, or is it just that it tells me 'forget it'?

Thanks for any help

Stefan