I have been intensively mapping for over two years now, most of that obviously connected to the #MapLesotho project. I had an older account which I handed over to my son to do a Geography project, and he never returned it !

GIS to Potlatch

When I started OSM mapping I had a good deal of experience of GIS (15 years!), and was well used to the simple “drawing and editing” tools in MapInfo and ArcView for example. When I started using OSM I was using Potlach and while it seemed to close down a lot I eventually got the hang of it and started marking in walkways that other mappers in Ireland seemed to miss. The main thing I did was apply location point tags to things, not knowing that because I opened it in Internet Explorer that Potlatch was unavoidable….. still and all, I had things to map and mapped them.

Potlatch to ID Editor

Summary: a breath of fresh air!! Should I say more? Some quirks exist acknowledged here. And a whole lot of other things happen people depending on their quality of internet connect and state of health of their machine…. just like all the other editors “shit happens”. I managed to rack up something like 750,000* quality nodes in Lesotho with ID, which I think shows that there are misnomers about speed, and different editors suit different people. In being co-ordinator for #MapLesotho in Fingal I was aware that all browser based editors can waste internet connectivity, which is gold in Africa. However, having roots in GIS I am used to a little Cartographic rendering, a little styling, and a little of what educationalists call “visual grammer”. ID cannot be faulted for its simple, tactile style.

ID Editor to JOSM

I have tried to “self teach” JOSM, but I don’t think its a self-teach thing. Between one thing and another I was always under pressure to run events, mapathons and so forth, and never really got the sit down time with an experienced user that I could question in detail about “how to”. But during #MapLesotho in Maseru this year I finally managed to “corner” Dacor and learn some very basics. I don’t find the JOSM editor very visually legible at all. I seem to take much longer to do what was “click, click, click, tag” in ID editor. I find the tagging engine slower and less easy to read. But of course, JOSM is lined up so much better to use QA tools. Those shortcuts are all so handy! However, JOSM isn’t as intuitive as things I have encountered, going back into my GIS roots.

So the winner is…

I will “stubbornly” persevere with JOSM into my fifth day, maybe living in hope that the oily and ugly garage rag look it has will improve, and the simplicity of ID could be fused into it. For me to say there is a superior editor to suit all people and all circumstances is glib group-think. People can excel in different editors, finding what suits them best. Long may we differ!

*Counts only started in February 2015 as a result of the Geofabrick extract that separates Lesotho from RSA.