[josm-dev] JOSM file format extensions

[Sebastian Klein]

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Sebastian Klein wrote:
>> What do you think? Feel free to suggest a better wording for the tags!
> 
> A long time ago there was a somewhat heated discussion on one of the 
> mailing lists involving one of the lead Merkaator developers who droned 
> on about how the format he's using is several orders of magnitude better 
> than JOSM's.
> 
> I never investigated their format, but supposedly it has all the things 
> you write about. I think you can even save something in Merkaartor then 
> load it again and undo something you did before the save or so ;)
> 
> I think that before we invent something new, or continue down our lonely 
> road (AFAIK nobody else uses the JOSM file format, do they?) we should 
> perhaps investigate whether we could use the same format Merkaartor is 
> using. If that doesn't work, then another option would be working with 
> OsmChange (.osc) files. They are allowed to have multiple versions of 
> the same object.

It's true, the Merkaator file format is much more sophisticated. But we 
don't have these advanced concepts like "dirty layer", so it is not 
compatible without a major rewrite. (And I don't see why this should be 
necessary, right now.)

Compared to that, the JOSM format is quite minimalistic. It just adds a 
action=* attribute and thats it. But it reflects much better, how the 
application "thinks". And it is very similar to the "standard" osm 
format and thus, can be processed by osmosis.

We could use the osmChange format, but then we would need to put the 
normal osm data and the osc change data in a zip-archive. I'm not sure 
this would be an improvement.

Regards, Sebastian