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

[David Groom]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Carden" <tom at tom-carden.co.uk>
To: <talk at openstreetmap.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 9:51 AM
Subject: [OSM-talk] The OSM Applet - let's ditch it for JOSM (was: 
MappingReading, some impressions)


> 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.  I accept, as I'm sure
> do Steve (who wrote the tiling interface to the applet amongst other
> bits) and Imi (who retrofitted tagging into the applet, even though he
> didn't like it!), that the way the applet works just isn't viable for
> efficient and productive editing.  If we knew then what we know now,
> we would have done it differently.  I don't want to hear any more "the
> applet sucks" type criticisim.  Everyone agrees it's unusable... and
> yet nobody is stepping up to do something about it.
>
> Here's my suggestion:
>
> 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?

I know this isn't said very often, but there are some nice things about the 
applet !!

I use JOSM for 99.9% of my editing, but on occasions I still find myself 
going to the applet (with all its inherent frustrations) for some editing 
tasks.

Off the top of my head reasons why I might use the applet are:

a) finding the way id of a particular way
b) reordering segments in an already created way
c) the ability to see landsat images has been useful when tidying up PGS 
coastline data ( I don't always have my Linux box switched on to use 
osmeditor2 - and remember not everyone will have a Linux machine anyway)

I'd be sad to see the applet disappear unless these features were available 
elsewhere.

Also I'm not a programmer, so may have misunderstood the situation, but if 
the "problem with the applet" is not the applet itself, but the underlying 
system architecture how will moving to an AJAX or Flash based solution help?

David






> Download links, how to navigate to the area you were just viewing, a
> full tutorial, etc.  I don't think at the moment it would hurt OSM one
> bit if JOSM became an 'official' client and there was no web-based
> editing solution.
>
> These are changes that can be written by any one of the extremely
> motivated non-coder OSM contributors, and would be far more
> productive, and less hurtful, than whining about the applet.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tom.
>
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