[OSM-talk] State of JOSM

[David Earl]

On 09/12/2007 13:28, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> Ray Booysen wrote:
> 
>> I'm also getting tired of the moment a person mentions something in  
>> the list around a drawback or what other people think, we get a  
>> response saying "Don't complain, do something about it."
> 
> ...
> 
> I've heard so many positive comments about the "new JOSM", and I  
> trust Frederik's judgement enough to know that he wouldn't have  
> changed it without a reason, to unquestioningly believe any  
> statements that "it is unusable, full stop". Nor am I doubting that  
> you hold your opinions strongly and with good reason, but clearly  
> there's more than one side to this story.


There've been a number of comments about the new way of working in JOSM, 
and they nearly all seem to boil down to not knowing about the modifier 
keys, and therefore being unable to do certain operations. In similar 
vein people do know about them but don't remember which does what or 
forget to press the modifier.

The modeless operation is definitely superior IMO. I was forever running 
back and forth to the menus in the old JOSM.

Essentially what we need is a way to make the mouse click do different 
things without having to press an extra button first and then another 
button to switch back again.

In Windows the right click is such an example; on Mac it is CTRL+Click. 
These give you menus.

So how about this: keep the modifier keys, but also make CLICK pop up a 
menu. The first entry is "extend from selection" so if you click and 
release the same as now happens - there could even be a brief delay 
before popping up the menu so you never normally see it. However once 
the menu is there you can do any number of things, not just limited by 
the number of modifier key combinations. Each operation could have a 
shortcut letter as well so CLICK+N for example could be "start new way" 
and you can see this because use you have a menu in front of you to 
prompt. Or you just choose from the menu. Select could be an option so 
you don't necessarily have to go into select mode to do a one-off 
select. You can have a one-shot "delete" and a "delete way and all its 
non-shared nodes"

This retains the spirit of the modeless operation, indeed extends it, 
but gives the vital missing prompt.

David