[OSM-talk] N00b experiences

[Etienne]

Christoph
Welcome to OpenStreetMap.

See comments below.

Etienne


On 9/3/06, Christoph Eckert <ce at christeck.de> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
>
> I just purchased one of these cool gps gadgets a couple of days before,
> and I wonder how I survived all the past years without having one :) .
> It's a mobile device so I can use it on the bike as well as for car
> routing.
> I found openstretmap.org a cool project, so I wanted to contribute some
> streets of my home town. I cruised some systematically to get proper
> tracks. Then I tried to learn more how to convert and upload them as
> streets. That's where the pure fun stopped and the odyssey started :) .
>
> I tried several of the tools provided. First I uploaded my tracks and
> tried the java applet embedded in the browser. This was really lame.


I think we all agree.  It's a really bad thing to present to new users.
Even for browsing it sucks.  Some people do use it for editing but I can't
believe they have a very nice time.


Often it didn't load completely, so I had less chance to do something
> useful at all. I tried several browsers (Konqueror & Firefox on Linux,
> Safari & Firefox on a Mac and finally IE on Windows) on various
> bandwidths, with no better results.
> Thus I downloaded the java tool to my machine, but it didn't start and
> gave me an error message instead.


JOSM is actually pretty good if you can live with Java.  Not sure why it
didn't work for you on the day.  Maybe you can share your error on this
list?  Someone may know about it.


Finally, I managed to do a svn
> checkout of osmeditor and compiled it. Though there were lots of
> warnings, it did compile and it runs, so I was able to upload some
> streets (even that loading tiled maps made it very lame, so I stopped
> using map overlays).


I've not used osmeditor  so can't comment.  Maybe others will.

Though it worked, I'd wish some features it doesn't provide yet. As I
> just have read that the openstreetmap user base constantly increases, I
> postulate that one very important requirement for openstreetmap.org is
> the need to improve/simplify the tools to contribute content. Currently
> it seems to be very difficult to new users. Projects like Wikipedia.org
> never wouldn't have been that successful if editing wasn't that simple.
>
> So my main question is: Do you agree that the editing tools need
> improvements?


Yes

If so: Are there enough hackers who are willing to spend
> some spare time in improving (e.g.) osmeditor2?


No

I for myself are willing to help, but my programming skills are rather
> limited (though I
> can write some Qt4 code).


All volunteers are especially welcome.


Somehow I'm very glad that there is a tool
> written in Qt4, because this makes it platform independent and I
> personally dislike Java.
>
> Or am I totally wrong and haven't found the right tool yet :) ?


I use JOSM very heavily.  It is well designed and very usable.  There are a
lot of neat features that the other editors don't have so its worth looking
at further IMHO.

Please note that this is no complaint at all. I just try to convert my
> experiences into something useful.


All feedback is welcome :-)

--
>
> Thanks & best regards,
>
> ce
>
>
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