[Taginfo-dev] XAPI

[David Paleino]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2011 12:22:28 +0200, Jochen Topf wrote:

> Currently the XAPI and JOSM buttons are hardcoded to the XAPI server at
> informationfreeway.org which is supposed to forward to a working instance of
> the XAPI but doesn't. Or maybe there just is no working instance any more.
> 
> Some of you have changed this to use a JAXPI server. I tried the OSMF JXAPI
> server but that was horrendously slow.

I just added a jXAPI button alongside the other two -- even if the "canonical"
XAPI seems not working or terribly out-of-date.

Regarding OSMF's JXAPI: I didn't find it to be slow, but I found that its
limit of 10°-square bboxes is a problem sometimes.

> And I don't want to use the Mapquest server when I can avoid it, because I
> don't want Taginfo to be dependent on a non-community server.

+1

> Another problem is that http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/XAPI says to the
> JXAPI servers: "relations not fully supported" whatever that means. I don't
> want to link to something that can't work.

I'm CCing Ian to understand this. Ian, could you please explain what's exactly
"not supported" about relations? Any chance to fix this? Is the source available
anywhere? (in case someone feels brave enough to try and provide a patch)

> I have already been getting user complaints about this, so some solution would
> be nice.
> 
> This is a wider problem and has been for a long time. Lots of people depend on
> the XAPI and the many problems with it have been really frustrating. I don't
> think we can provide the perfect solution. But I guess we have to do
> something.
> 
> One option would be to let the user decide. Give him a drip-down menu or
> something to choose which server she wants. But that requires coding and makes
> the UI more complex.

The 'coding' bit shouldn't be much of a problem -- it can be easily done in
javascript I believe :) (I'm available to do it, if needed)

But yes, it needs some thought about the positioning. I really like the buttons
over there, but adding a dropdown menu breaks that layout a bit.

> We could also just write out the query string and users can cut-and-paste it
> together with their favourite server URL. Thats quite ugly and complicated for
> the user. But easy to implement for us.

-1, I agree it's uglier and more difficult for the user :)

My 2c,
David

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