[Merkaartor] Why so many modes?

[Dirk Stöcker]

On Thu, 1 Jul 2010, Chris Browet wrote:

> Well, besides move mode (which can be merged with edit mode in preferences), I don't quite see what other UI paradigm you have in mind...
> 
> The idea is to switch to a mode (=context) so that Merkaartor knows what to do of your mouse clicks.
> 
> What do you have in mind to make Merkaartor understand your mouse click is to create a node rather than to begin a road without context switching?
> 
> AFAIK, all the editors use the same paradigm.

I found this thread and may add the JOSMs point of view. In the last year 
JOSM was reworked, so we have a (nearly) modeless editing.

Essentially we have two modes now, which are sometimes switched 
transparently.
1) Select, pan, move, ... mode
2) Add mode

Workflow for adding is:
- Press A or click add icon (go to add mode)
- Draw something.
- Doubleclick, deselect or switch to select mode to end drawing
   (Initial doubleclicking means creating a single node)
- After doublelick you stay in add mode, so you can draw elsewhere anew.

Deleting is done by <DEL> key (we still have a delete mode, but it is not 
used a lot).

Even a Potlatch-style editing exists (which means you can automatically 
switch to add mode by clicking twice in select mode - which is a bit 
dangerous like it is in Potlatch, so very few people use it). Although our 
aim was modeless editing we stayed at the current two modes and the 
configuration option for Potlatch-style. The final modeless editing (the 
Potlatch style) has a lot of drawbacks, which caused us to stop a little 
bit before.

I think the modeless editing as well as the virtual nodes did greatly 
enhance the workflow of JOSM. Merkaartor already has virtual nodes, so 
maybe the next step should be modeless editing?

Ciao
-- 
http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)