[OSM-talk] Could JOSM be dumbed down?

[Jo]

For years and years we have been asking to add a rectangular building
drawing mode to iD. Technically most likely trivial to implement, but so
hard to get someone to actually willing to do it. JOSM's buildings_tool
plugin makes adding rectangular buildings so convenient, but alas that is
considered too hard to install and use, which is not true either. It's
totally possible to get beginning mappers started with JOSM.

Polyglot

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 8:11 PM John Whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm thinking more of HOT's use of what I might call disposable mappers
> mapping in places such as Africa.
>
> I come across patches of untagged ways that are drawn over buildings, and
> buildings with odd tags on them.
>
> If you look at the number of buildings each mapper maps often it's quite
> low say twenty or so.  In iD I think it's 4 clicks to put the corners in,
> one for q, then you need to add the tag say seven mouse clicks per
> building.  With the buildings_tool it's either three clicks or two clicks.
> More to the point the building is correctly tagged for mapping from imagery
> and you get twice as many buildings for the same number of clicks.
>
> I suspect there are other things that could be restricted as well
> according to the task manager settings.
>
> So no it wouldn't offer any functionality that iD doesn't today other than
> the buildings_tool plugin. If anything it would only permit a subset of
> things to be mapped.  The more flexibility and complexity you offer the
> more likelihood there will be errors in the work and the longer the
> training period.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> Andy Townsend wrote on 1/19/2022 1:42 PM:
>
> On 19/01/2022 18:23, John Whelan wrote:
>
> I'm thinking of new mappers adding buildings.  JOSM with the
> buildings_tool plugin is ideal for doing this but is considered by many to
> be too complex for a beginner.
>
> So would it be possible to hide most of the flexibility and options and
> present an easy to use version of JOSM to new mappers?
>
> Presumably you're referring to
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM/Plugins/BuildingsTools rather
> than anything actually called "building_tool".
>
> What would it and a "dumbed down JOSM" offer that iD does not already
> offer?
>
> "drawing a rectangle and clicking q" does not seem arduous to me at all.
>
> I can imagine that if someone's mapping intricate terraces then JOSM
> plugins are really useful, but I'm guessing that's not really an issue
> where you're looking at new users' edits?
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Andy
>
>
>
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