[OSM-talk] Potlatch 2 Public Alpha

Dave F. davefox at madasafish.com
Sat Jul 10 15:44:47 BST 2010


Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> (Deep breath)
>
> I'm delighted to unveil a test version of Potlatch 2, the all-new, 
> completely rewritten version of OpenStreetMap's online editor.
>
> You can play with it at http://www.geowiki.com/ . It talks to the main 
> OSM server and you can make real edits with it.
>
> This is a public alpha. This means it's an early version of the 
> software and there are lots of bugs in it. Performance leaves a whole 
> lot to be desired. It _will_ eat your memory, and it may freeze up or 
> crash. Presets for ways don't generally have icons - either that or 
> they're a bit sketchy. There's no documentation.
>
> It's an experimental release for people who already have experience 
> using Potlatch and know what they're doing. It's not for newbies - yet!
>
> But here's some of the cool stuff it does:
> - super friendly tagging system
> - WYSIWYG map display with names on roads and the like
> - powerful editing tools like 'make right-angled', 'create parallel 
> line' and so on
> - vector backgrounds so you can manually bring in .osm files, 
> shapefiles and so on
> - dedicated turn restriction and route editors
> - really good relations support
>
> It's not just a general-purpose editor: you can use it to create your 
> own editor with your favourite presets, icons, backgrounds and 
> rendering. Everything is in easily configurable files, and it talks 
> OAuth so people can log into the OSM server securely from outside. We 
> hope that people will use it to build cycle-specific editors, public 
> transport editors, "fix unnamed roads" editors... all of that. It's a 
> foundation for people to do more cool stuff with OSM.
>
> Potlatch 2 has only been possible thanks to the contributions, in 
> particular, of Dave Stubbs and Andy Allan. Dave has built a terrific 
> architecture for the program in general, way beyond anything I could 
> ever think up, and in particular for the tagging system. Andy has 
> given it a relation editor so much more powerful than P1 ever had, 
> niggled away at a zillion little bugs, and given the project the 
> impetus it needed. Lots of other people have helped as well: Twain47 
> (Mr Nominatim) contributed some excellent icons, Matt wrote the superb 
> quadrilateralise function, Shaun added Big Concrete Blocks et al to 
> the presets, and loads of others have helped. I'm delighted to only be 
> one of the cast and think it augurs really well for the future.
>
> So what now?
>
> You _will_ find a really obvious bug about five seconds into using it. 
> I guarantee it. Please use the wiki pages to report it: 
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Potlatch_2 . There's three pages 
> for filing bugs so we can prioritise which to fix first.
>
> It's all open source (obviously) in a proper language (ActionScript 3) 
> with a real framework (Flex) and an open source compiler (Flex Open 
> Source SDK). If you would like to get involved with coding it: \o/, 
> woo and yay.
>
> If you'd like just to improve the presets and the stylesheets, \o/ woo 
> and yay too - you don't need to program for that. We have a mailing 
> list, potlatch-dev 
> (http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/potlatch-dev) to talk about 
> development of whatever stripe. And the stylesheet language, MapCSS, 
> is racing on - but more of that anon.


Great. Thanks for that.

One thing I can't find is GPX tracks (key: G). Has it not been 
implemented yet or am I going blind?

Ta
Dave F.




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