[OSM-newbies] JOSM assistance required

[Craig Wallace]

On 18/05/2011 22:50, Kevin Steinhardt wrote:
> All, ...
>
> I did look for a JOSM questions mailing list with no luck. If this
> isn't appropriate for this list, apologies --- but you've read it; you
> can't unread it.

There is a josm-dev mailing list. Its mostly for more technical stuff, 
but you can ask questions there. Though this newbies list might be 
better for more basic stuff. Or help.openstreetmap.org

> I've got a 16x16 PNG of a paddenstoel (it's a Dutch thing) and I'd
> like to tell JOSM (which I run from a Java archive, at ~/josm.jar) to
> display it when I tag a node with highway=paddenstoel. While I use
> JOSM for practically everything OpenStreetMap, I'm not really one to
> delve into its inner workings. I have a few questions:
>
>         (1) Where would I copy the PNG so it's not being sourced from
> my Desktop directory all the time?; I might (one day) tidy-up my
> Desktop and then my paddenstoel icon would no longer work.
>         (2) What do I need to write to let JOSM know that
> highway=paddenstoel on a node means "display this icon"?

To get JOSM to display an icon for a particular tag, you have to create 
a Map Paint style file. Basically its an XML file or CSS file, that says 
what icon to display for a particular tag. See 
http://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Styles
As the style file will refer to your PNG icon, its simplest to put them 
in the same directory. But this can be any directory on your computer 
(or a URL), you just have to load it in the JOSM preferences.

>         (3) What do I do if I'm interested in sharing said PNG with the
> OSM community. There are literally thousands of paddenstoelen across
> the Netherlands but none seems to be mapped; it seems like such a
> great project to map them --- and why on earth not?

For sharing your style file and icon, you can upload it to the JOSM wiki 
(or your own website), then add it to the list on that page for JOSM 
styles. Then it will be available for anyone else to use in JOSM.

> I'm currently writing a page for the OpenStreetMap wiki on
> highway=paddenstoel, by the way. Many thanks for your responses in
> advance.

I'm not sure what a paddenstoel is, but from looking at nl.wikipedia it 
appears to be a type of waymarker/guidepost in the shape of a mushroom?
If so, you may be best using the existing tag for that 
(information=guidepost), plus a subtag for what sort of guidepost it is, 
eg guidepost=paddenstoel ?
You can still create a JOSM style to show an icon for that if you want.

Craig