[Merkaartor] A few interface notes

[Matias D'Ambrosio]

 I have been using merkaartor a lot, I find it to be the best OSM program for 
laying out streets based on yahoo imagery, but I feel the interface could be 
improved a little. I do plan to work on it, but of course if someone already 
familiar with merkaartor wants to do any of these, it'd be faster :-)
 When laying out a way/road, when one presses ESC or goes back to selection 
mode, the way one just laid should be selected, probably with keyboard focus 
on the Properties Dock. Adding/modifying tags is I think a very common task 
after one lays a way, and it helps when laying a way that shares segments 
with others.
 Is it possible to download just items visible at low zoom levels, to get a 
bearing? This downloading would not remove the 'downloaded area' shade, but 
it'd be great for finding your way around.
 Most keyboard shortcuts are combinations, when there is no need. Creating a 
road could be 'r', creating a node 'n', etc. Also, ctrl+v could be 'merge 
paste' and ctrl+o 'overwrite paste' (at least I find merge paste to be the 
most usual action). I have modified this and been working this way, my hand 
is in much better shape :-) Of course, the ability to change shortcuts would 
be a better solution, but that would require a lot of code.
 When selecting multiple items with shift, clicking on an empty area (while 
holding shift down) should not clear the selection. If one wants to clear the 
selection pressing ESC or releasing shift and then clicking on an empty area 
are just fine ways of doing that.
 What does 'download more' even do? Is it the same as opening the usual 
download dialog and then pressing enter? The purpose is not clear, and if it 
does just that, I don't see the need of using a two key combination over two 
keys in sequence.
 When looking at an area at a zoom level (say, the scale shows '2 km') in 
which some items can't be seen, invisible nodes should not be selectable (at 
least by clicking, maybe area selection makes sense?). It makes it harder to 
actually select what you're looking at.
 Would it be possible to shade areas over time? So that if one downloaded an 
area two days ago, it should probably be marked as outdated.
 I can't think of any other issues right now, truth is I love merkaartor :-)
 Btw, I don't think I have mentioned this before, but I have merkaartor 
working on a laptop with just 32MB of RAM, it gets a bit slow when using 
yahoo imagery but works just fine otherwise.