[OSM-talk] New Download Dialog for JOSM

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Thu May 17 01:54:41 BST 2007


Hi,

>    I would like to solicit your opinion on a new design of the JOSM 
> download dialog.

Thank you for the numerous replies. I'll answer en bloc:

Scott Walde about the world chooser:
 > Yes, I have been using that lately.  I find it useful when I want to
 > download only a bit of one of my bookmarks.  I select the bookmark,
 > zoom way in, and select the area I'm interested in.  If it gets
 > disconnected from the bookmarks, though, I wouldn't use it.

It will still be connected, only on a different tab.

Joerg Ostertag & others:
 > I long time didn't know that you can zoom in by using the scroll
 > wheel. So maybe we can mention this somewhere in this dialog. Or when
 > you hover over the picture.

I have added a hint below the world map.

Mike Collinson & others:
 > I use Windows on a laptop.  Bear in mind, three-button mouse actions
 > and often scroll actions are not available to such reprobate users.

It is probably one of the lesser-known features in JOSM, but zooming and 
panning with the keyboard have been supported (in the main map view) for 
over half a year. Hold down the CTRL key, then use the arrow keys to 
pan, or the "." and "," keys to zoom in/zoom out. I have now enabled 
this for the download world chooser as well, and also added a scale display.

Ulf Lamping:
 > P.S: Will the dialog remember which tab was used the last time? It
 > would be really annoying if you have to get to the right tab first
 > each time you'll open the dialog :-)

The last used tab is now remembered.

Christof Dallermassl:
 > Looks good! I would make the bookmark tab the default one (at least
 > that is the one I use most of the time). A search tab would be
 > great!!!

The last used tab is remembered through the preferences file so that if 
your last download used the bookmarks tab, this will be the one to open 
first. There is a minor ugliness here - since the download dialog is 
reset to the viewport coordinates when you call it up with the bookmark 
tab selected, there will be no bookmark highlighted in the list because 
the viewport cannot be "matched backwards" into a bookmark.

A search tab will surely be added by a plugin.

Sebastian Spaeth:
 > 1) Further simplify the dialog by putting "data sources" in a separate
 > tab and have the check boxes there. Otherwise it looks inconsistent.
 > Does anybody only want to download GPX and not OSM data, ever? If not,
 > we can get rid of the OSM checkbox alogether.

Not changed. I think that data sources will have to be remodelled sooner 
or later, when OSM data can be downloaded from other servers (mirrors) 
and/or other data types are downloaded from third-party servers. Until 
then I'll leave this as it is in order not to force people to do too 
many tab switches.

 > 2) URL from www.osm.org... I don't understand what it does. I know
 > that is already exists now, but I still don't know. Can we make a (?)
 > link, that links to some wiki page explaining it? Also why a text
 > area, is a text box not enough? You just need some space to paste it,
 > really.

I put a text there to show initially (when the dialog is called up 
empty). I changed it from the one-line textbox it was before to make it 
easier for people to copy an URL *from* JOSM. Of course this is, 
strictly speaking, misuse of the download dialog (calling it not to 
download but just to see an URL), but hey, so is adding bookmarks...

 > 3) I object to the naming of the tab "world". It is totally
 > non-intuitive and doesn't explain it's purpose. Call it "Map Selector"
 > or something else, but world doesn't cut it.

Renamed to "map" - wanted to stay concise because nothing is uglier than 
tab panes with multiple rows of tabs!

New dialog will be in josm-latest.jar from Thursday morning provided I 
manage to commit within the next 40 minutes ;-)

Bye
Frederik

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




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