I basically agree with most of your points, especially what you said about the keyboard shortcuts. I often modify (beautify) existing long roads by adding new nodes to that road and moving nodes around. Therefore I have to use Ctrl-N and Ctrl-M frequently and alternating, which almost gives me the RSI syndrome to my left hand while using the right hand to push the mouse ;-) Using keyboard shortcuts without modifiers might become a problem, though. I noticed that when playing around with a buggy german translation already having just N for new node and R for new road. Depending on where your keyboard focus was, strange things were happening...
I don't see the benefit of shading areas over time. I usually download and upload most frequently just the area I am about to edit. I never keep a downloaded area over days, that means I never save my work locally. I'd like to add one thought regarding my workflow when mapping an urban area: I usualy have a GPX track also containing custom waypoints besides the track points. In the field I create these consecutevely numbered waypoints at street crossings or other way marks and I make a note about the street names at this point. When creating a road with Merkaartor I have to find out where the street starts and where it ends by comparing my field notes with the waypoint numbers. This waypoint number is its name tag and I can only see it in the properties dock when selecting that node. Unfortunately I cannot see that when beeing in create road mode. I always have to leave that mode, select one of these nodes to find out its number, and start creating a new road again. It would help a lot if I could somehow see the waypoint tags when creating a road, e.g. as tooltip or something. I would not want it for normal track points, just for waypoints/nodes having more than the location tags. I'm not sure if this could be helpful for normal selection mode, too - not just when creating a road? Regards, Peter Matias D'Ambrosio wrote: > I have been using merkaartor a lot, I find it to be the best OSM program for > laying out streets based on yahoo imagery, but I feel the interface could be > improved a little. I do plan to work on it, but of course if someone already > familiar with merkaartor wants to do any of these, it'd be faster :-) > When laying out a way/road, when one presses ESC or goes back to selection > mode, the way one just laid should be selected, probably with keyboard focus > on the Properties Dock. Adding/modifying tags is I think a very common task > after one lays a way, and it helps when laying a way that shares segments > with others. > Is it possible to download just items visible at low zoom levels, to get a > bearing? This downloading would not remove the 'downloaded area' shade, but > it'd be great for finding your way around. > Most keyboard shortcuts are combinations, when there is no need. Creating a > road could be 'r', creating a node 'n', etc. Also, ctrl+v could be 'merge > paste' and ctrl+o 'overwrite paste' (at least I find merge paste to be the > most usual action). I have modified this and been working this way, my hand > is in much better shape :-) Of course, the ability to change shortcuts would > be a better solution, but that would require a lot of code. > When selecting multiple items with shift, clicking on an empty area (while > holding shift down) should not clear the selection. If one wants to clear the > selection pressing ESC or releasing shift and then clicking on an empty area > are just fine ways of doing that. > What does 'download more' even do? Is it the same as opening the usual > download dialog and then pressing enter? The purpose is not clear, and if it > does just that, I don't see the need of using a two key combination over two > keys in sequence. > When looking at an area at a zoom level (say, the scale shows '2 km') in > which some items can't be seen, invisible nodes should not be selectable (at > least by clicking, maybe area selection makes sense?). It makes it harder to > actually select what you're looking at. > Would it be possible to shade areas over time? So that if one downloaded an > area two days ago, it should probably be marked as outdated. > I can't think of any other issues right now, truth is I love merkaartor :-) > Btw, I don't think I have mentioned this before, but I have merkaartor > working on a laptop with just 32MB of RAM, it gets a bit slow when using > yahoo imagery but works just fine otherwise. > > _______________________________________________ > Merkaartor mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/merkaartor > > _______________________________________________ Merkaartor mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/merkaartor
