[OSM-talk] State of JOSM

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> What are everyone else's thoughts on the matter?  I would prefer JOSM to
> act the way it did before just without an add segments option, it would
> mean an easier method (for me at least) of adding data.

It takes a bit of getting used to but once you get the hang of it it
really is much better than what we had before; I have had *many*
reports of heavy duty mappers saying how they disliked it at first but
have now gotten the hang of it.

I am sure there are many glitches that we still need to iron out. For
example I would like to make this whole "modifier key" business more
configurable.

In fact you can almost emulate the old behaviour this way:

* Enter the "add" mode
* hold Shift
* set any number of nodes by clicking

This is roughly equivalent to the simple "add node" mode before. 

If you, later, select one node and then click on another, already
existing, node in "add" mode, then "segments" will be drawn between
them and appended to the current way (click with "alt" key to start a
new way). This is roughly equivalent to the "add segment" mode that
you had before.

And at the same time, when you click somewhere where there's no node
yet, a new one is created, which is the same as the "add node and
connect" mode before.

So the change is really not that huge if bring just a little bit of
flexibility to the table, and in a dynamic project like ours we simply
cannot afford to support "legacy" styles for ever. Changes will be
made, and will be made to JOSM in the future, that will require people
to adjust the way they work. If it were possible to offer everyone the
interface he has grown used to, forever, I'd probably aim to do that
in order not to upset people but that would require so much work as to
make any progress unlikely.

If you care to look at  http://josm.openstreetmap.de/ticket/11, you
will find that the removal of "modes" in JOSM has been an issue for
over a year, raised as one of the first issues on the JOSM trac by Imi
himself. It is something that was long discussed, and mentioned in
several posts on the lists, so anyone could have taken the opportunity
to influence the process.

We're very open to constructive criticism. However our primary aim is
to make JOSM "absolutely usable" (i.e. usable to people new to JOSM)
instead of "relatively usable" (i.e. usable to people already
acquainted with JOSM). This may seem unfair since we should design for
those already doing the work and not for those expected to start
tomorrow, but remember that this is an exponential growth project:
During the next month alone, the number of people having their first
JOSM session will probably be greater than the number of existing JOSM
users. 

So. We're trying to become better and any help is appreciated. It is
not unthinkable to write a plugin that offers the old user interface,
if there is really a pressing need for this, but I'll not be the one
to write it as I prefer to look forward. 

I am not saying the current way JOSM works is perfect but I am pretty
sure it is better than the endless mode switching we had before. We
haven't changed a lot since the "modeless" implementation but that is
not because we believe that what we have is final, just that we wanted
to let it settle a bit and make sure that everyone gets some exposure
and collect their feedback and comments before we soldier on.

Anyone willing to participate in JOSM development, be that by
submitting code or by discussing sensible changes to the user
interface, is welcome to join the josm-dev list.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'