[OSM-talk] The OSM Applet - let's ditch it for JOSM (was: Mapping Reading, some impressions)

[Nick Whitelegg]

On Tuesday 05 Sep 2006 09:51, Tom Carden wrote:
> On 04/09/06, Tom Chance <tom at acrewoods.net> wrote:
> > The web applet sucks.
>
> Speaking as the person who wrote the initial version of the current
> applet, can I just say that the continued trashing of it on this list
> is tiresome, offensive, and not constructive.  

> It seems that for 99% of people actually actively mapping, JOSM is the
> main tool of choice (no offense to other editor writers).  How about
> we ditch the applet and put a page about JOSM on the edit tab?

Whilst JOSM serves the needs of the power OSM user well, I think that there is 
a need for, more than anything else, a high-level editor which abstracts away 
the complexities of Map Features and allows users to construct ways using a 
high level 'type', such as motorway, A road, B road, footpath and bridleway. 
This could be internationalised so that in say France it's autoroute, N road, 
D road, unclassified road, Euro walking route, GR walking route, other 
walking routes (sorry, don't know enough about French footpaths). It should 
also graphically give the user the feeling that they're drawing a map. In 
fact, in that respect I actually think the applet succeeds quite well. Indeed 
a few weeks back - when my impression (probably incorrect) was still that 
50%+ odd of people were still using the applet - I was planning on bringing 
the applet forward e.g. to support Map Features and colour ways depending on 
type.

This should probably be web based, although one advantage of a standalone 
editor is that it would allow the user to read data from their GPS without 
resorting to other programs. 

This is what I've been trying to do with osmeditor2, though the simple fact 
that it's a huge job to code a live online editor which is very easy to use 
for newbies, and I do other OSM related things (Freemap, surveying) - not to 
mention paid work - means it is proving difficult to find the time.

Also, overall, given a user can just fire up a browser, my current thoughts 
are that web-based is the way to go. I guess if a user has the know-how to 
use a GPS, they will have the know-how to use something like gpsbabel (or 
equivalent).

Looking at Richard's initial screenshots I'm really encouraged by Potlatch and 
I think on reflection helping out with Potlatch could well be where I put my 
efforts, on the editor side of things, in the coming months. I think there's 
every chance this could be OSM's killer app. As long as Potlatch can deal 
with the needs of UK walkers, and I can direct Freemap users to it as their 
default OSM editor - I'll be happy.

Re. the issues with Flash, I think it is a fact at the moment that - despite 
the emergence of the Canvas tag, and the fact that you can do some nice 
things with AJAX/Canvas - it isn't yet quite possible to develop a pure AJAX 
editor with the flexibility of a Flash editor. The main issue is that you 
can't draw text on a canvas yet so some hacks with <div>s would be needed.

Nick