[OSM-talk] Potlatch, dual carriageways, and a broken changeset

[Michal Migurski]

Ah, that makes sense.

Frustrating, frustrating sense. =)

I didn't even see a padlock, just noticed that they were a funny color.

My suggestion, completely uninformed by the reality of maintaining the  
Potlatch codebase, is that you ditch the "locked ways" feature, and  
instead make sure that multi-level undo is completely bulletproof. It  
seems weird that some ways are not like other ways, esp. when they're  
created by a built-in feature of the app. All of this assumes of  
course that you're editing in save mode, not live mode. Maybe save  
mode should be further distinguished from live mode by the absence of  
these kinds of mistake-avoidance features?

A stop gap might be better visual indication on the locked way itself,  
and ditching the "lock" terminology. The choice of red makes me think  
that the way is "really there" when it sounds like the reverse is  
true. What if it was dashed or translucent, a ghost-thing that looks  
like it's not fully part of the rest of the map? The best analogy to  
this I can think of is Adobe Illustrator's guides feature. Maybe when  
you mouse over such a way it says "hi, I'm not really here".

Anyway.

-mike.

On Nov 6, 2009, at 3:28 PM, Richard Fairhurst wrote:

> Michal Migurski wrote:
>> I did notice that Potlatch had them rendered in red this whole time
>> but I wasn't sure what that meant. Help!
>
> Potlatch has the concept of a "locked" way - that's one that won't be
> uploaded. It renders in red and has a little padlock by the way ID.
>
> You can unlock it by clicking the padlock (or pressing K in true
> Potlatch obscure keypress fashion).
>
> This first appeared with the GPX-to-way function way back when - the
> idea being that if you've automatically imported a load of random
> squiggles from your GPS track, they shouldn't be expressly uploaded
> unless you tell them to. (Back then Potlatch only had live editing, so
> it was quite crucial not to upload them immediately.) The "parallel
> way" feature creates locked ways for the same reason - ways created
> automatically shouldn't be uploaded without conscious user choice.
>
> I'm very open to ideas on how to improve the UI to fix any confusion
> here. Should Potlatch (in save mode) alert the user "You have 5 locked
> ways, with names Frog Street | Acacia Avenue | etc. - are you sure?"?
> Bright ideas welcome.
>
> cheers
> Richard
>
>
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