OpenStreetMap
Today I made my first steps in editing objects in OSM. I selected some area in Stuttgart-Heslach that was not yet covered.
Because I have no GPS, I just wrote down street names and entered the data in Potlatch, using the underlying Yahoo orthophoto as a basis.
It's great fun and I hope that I could borrow a GPS device by someone and get some tracks recorded. At first, Potlatch was a bit unintuitive in usage but I got used to it. I think an easier to use editor could attrackt more people to this project.
Discussion
Comment from Richard on 1 May 2008 at 22:56
How do you think it could become more intuitive? Always happy to hear suggestions.
Comment from eAi on 2 May 2008 at 15:20
Richard, there's many confusing aspects of the editor:
- Took me a while to realise you can click the icon next to the drop down to switch the type of things in the list (car/bike/on foot etc)
- The node names etc are confusing. This is the main issue. The editor could provide some help for each type. You could be able to search for 'bicycle' and see the options and use one of them. Perhaps even some buttons which let you use the last few you'd use for fast access.
- You can't subtly adjust a node's position, it locks on to the place it was before. There might be a keyboard key to modify that (like in Photoshop), but I've not found that.
- I'd seriously consider making a simplified mode where the values to fill in are prescribed, with easy help saying what to do with them. Guide the user through the process and don't try to allow everything possible to be done. Allow an advanced mode for that...
- Things like one-way streets are not obvious. It's not obvious how to mark a route as for foot and cycles for example. Sure you can search through the wiki for it, but the editor should make that obvious. One way streets could show arrows on them, as the direction arrow can be meaningless on a crescent-shaped street.
- Adding a point on a way can be done using key combinations, but from the UI it isn't obvious. At least not to me. Having a photoshop-style palette might help, with a 'add point to way' cursor etc.
- Maybe I'm really stupid, but I can't tell how you undo something. Can you?
There's probably more points I've got. I think Potlatch is pretty good, but it's still not intuitive.
Ed
Comment from Richard on 2 May 2008 at 21:38
Thanks for the comments. Having to remember tags isn't exclusive to Potlatch, of course, but it's scheduled that a future version will have an easier preset system; same goes for the undo option.
Potlatch is intended to be palette-free ("modeless"): on the one hand it means you have to remember when to shift-click and when not, but on the other you don't need to remember what icon does what, or keep switching. There's advantages to both ways, I guess.