[OSM-talk] Suggestion for JOSM

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:
> I would commend this forced simplification to the JOSM devs. Ways are
> automatically split after an interval of n seconds.

Unlike Potlatch JOSM is a powertool. It shouldn't force you to do anything.

Recently I traced a zigzag road in Greece from a GPX track in JOSM by
converting the GPX to OSM, cleaning it up by deleting a few point
clouds and then merging it into the main layer & uploading:

   http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/40783985/history

I tried to simplify the track using the utilsplugin but that made the
road way more inaccurate than my trace was. What was previously a
smooth curve around a bend turned into a few crude points that would
have looked bad on the map.

I could have manually traced or fixed the whole thing but that would
have taken me at least an hour instead of the 2-5 minutes it took by
using the GPX->OSM->fix method.

We would do well to remember that not everyone wants to spend an hour
to perfectly trace some way in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes
importing an almost raw GPX track is quick, good enough and perfectly
appropriate.

We can always fix the data later.