[OSM-talk] State of JOSM

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Sun Dec 9 23:02:12 GMT 2007


Hi,

> For example, say you allowed key configuration. Merge is normally M, but 
> some guy decides he wants to bind it to G because it's nearer his 
> favourite finger (or something). You then add a new function and bind it 
> to G; he complains because "I'm already using G".
> 
> Better would be to do our best to find a set of defaults which are 
> fairly intuitive, and ask everyone to learn them :-)

I agree, but even if you have a good default, things need to be
configurable for those with one-button mice, with mousepads,
trackballs or what-have-you. 

> > 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). 
> 
> As I've argued in another message, I think that's a mistake. Although I 
> would hope to design a UI which was usable while also being as learnable 
> as possible too. The two are not necessarily incompatible :-)

I think that your concept of learnable vs. usable and my concept of
absolutely vs. relatively usable is not really the same. I was just
trying to say that when faced with the decision of either keeping some
idiosyncratic feature just because it has always been that way, or
replacing it with something that had the potential of improving
productivity (at the cost of temporarily upsetting people used to the
"old way") then we should always do that.

Whether or not the application is easy to lern or a powerful tool for
the expert is somewhat orthogonal to that I think. Personally I would
sacrifice learnability for power any time... to an extent ;-)

> Is the current implementation considered modeless? It seems to me that 
> it has four modes - zoom, select, add and delete.

Erm, well, let's say it is a less-modes implementation compared to
what we had before ;-)

Bye
Frederik

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





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