[OSM-talk] Mappers and apps should focus on relations at the very start

[Bryce Nesbitt]

On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 10:49 AM, Tom MacWright <tom at macwright.org> wrote:
>
> Okay, but most relations are invisible.
>

Relations are visible* if the editor makes them visible.*

The iD editor introduced an entirely synthetic primitive: the "area".
Thus, in iD, the "area" is visible.
The iD editor, or an editor like it, could introduce a "grouping", and make
it visible.

Relations are not only possible to visualize, they're interesting,  Click
on Main Street
and see the 12 bus lines that use Main street?  Interesting.  Click on a
line and learn
it forms the USA/Canadian Border, 8,891 km long, consisting of  5000 odd
line segments?  Interesting
and instructive.

A series of iD plugins for visualizing specific types of relations would
rock.  And of course in iD style
they'd be called something different, like, say, "Turn Restrictions" or a
"Public Transit Route" or "Site"
or a "Level 8 Administrative Boundary between X and Y".  The word relation
need
never come into it.

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By all-but-ignoring relation editing, Potlach and iD only make it easy to
ignore or even *damage* relations.  It's all downside.

That's not what you want for entry level editing.  A good experience for a
starting user is they made a positive contribution,
they saw the results rendered, and they did not mess anything up.  When the
editor makes messing up
an invisible single click (or inadvertent click) operation, it leads to
stress all around.

Relations are invisible only in editors that* leave them in the shadows.*
An editor that ignores or tries to hide a thing is unlikely to be the best
way to edit (or preserve) the invisible thing.
It's a form of "fake simplicity": making a given edit seem to be simpler
than it really can be.
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