[OSM-talk] [josm-dev] JOSM Modeless???

[John Bäckstrand]

Rick Collins wrote:
> One feature I would love to see could facilitate the use of track 
> data for generating ways.  Rather than use JOSM as electronic tracing 
> paper to draw ways over top of the tracks, I would like to have a 
> means to select nodes from the track to be transferred to a new 
> way.  In essence, let the track define the points and I am just 
> culling the ones that are superfluous to the way.  I think this could 
> be facilitated by letting JOSM tell you which points can be 
> eliminated and keeping the way to within a user specified distance of 
> the track.  In fact, I am working on a tool to test how well this can 
> work.  When I am done, I will be happy to share the algorithm, or 
> perhaps I will learn to code in Java and I can share the code.
>   
Firstly I am pretty sure someone implemented douglas-peucker line 
approximation for JOSM, but I could be wrong. Secondly your approach 
will consistently makes curves smaller than they really are, I find I 
"overshoot" the points I make ways out of to get the actual line/way to 
line up somewhat with the underlying track.

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John Bäckstrand