[OSM-talk] GeoChat plugin for JOSM

[Frederik Ramm]

Zverik,

On 10.05.2013 10:29, Ilya Zverev wrote:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM/Plugins/GeoChat

That sounds great. I always wanted to have something like that!

I have some thoughts about it - not meant to criticize, I'm really 
looking forward to seeing this used more widely!

* Are "private" messages really "private" in the senses that only the 
user logged in as the recipient will receive them? If not, maybe rename 
to "directed messages" or so.

* If this catches on, there will soon be demand for some kind of 
authentication - that keeps me from joining the chat under the name 
"Zverik" or so ;) maybe it could be implemented with OAuth, where the 
server would check with the OSM server whether the logged-in user has 
the same user name in OSM, and then notifies clients whether a certain 
user name is "authenticated" or not. People could still use any name but 
clients could make them show up in grey or so if they're not authenticated.

* I don't yet understand how messages are located. You seem to be using 
point coordinates only, so if i write something is that always mapped to 
the centre of my curren viewpoint? If I zoom out and have a 50x50km area 
on my screen, will I only see the messages pertaining to a 20km circle 
in the middle of my screen? - I have a feeling that maybe the plugin and 
protocol might benefit from extending this to use rectangles in sending 
as well as polling for messages.

* Auto-login for the plugin would be great.

* Maybe announce on JOSM's "message of the day" to get more people to 
try it out?

Great work!

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"