Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
Dirk Stöcker schrieb: * unknown relation type (warning) - JOSM should never assume to be in possession of a full list of allowed relation types! Right, that it only knows certain types, but making it an Info-text makes it loosing its function. Here the you should be sure if you know better is required for users. Maybe it would be possible to only warn once and add the relation type to the list of known relations if it gets uploaded? Regards, Thomas ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
2011/3/4 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org: Other things aside, as a user of JOSM have some comments. I'll give some examples for checks that I think are nannying too much, all these are active by default: * unknown relation type (warning) - JOSM should never assume to be in possession of a full list of allowed relation types! That's annoying for public transport using the Oxomoa scheme which seems unknown at least for stable JOSM. But in general I find it ok to warn. I don't perceive Unknown as Unknown as a whole but Unknown to the JOSM validator. You should pay attention, that's all. * unnamed ways (warning) - I think it is perfectly normal to draw streets from aerial imagery and have no name for them. This often saved me from uploading data where I forgot to ad name to newly traced streets. I think it will do more good than bad. Again, this is a warning only and only the user can decide. I second that dialogues should be more modest and don't say Data has errors. if that isn't dead sure (OTOH, I myself never read the title text anyway). I'd call it Data may have issues. I myself am closely paying attention to errors and warnings listed and think the validator is a strong point of JOSM. But I also ignore stuff after validating it myself. Rolf ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, Frederik Ramm wrote: In my eyes the validator does not have a problem with one specific check; it has an attitude problem. Until now I wasn't aware that it was *your* attitude I was criticizing when I said so ;) but I think the validator is nannying people too much, *especially* (and I checked that before writing it) since it is enabled by default on a new install. I asked some non-development users now and it seems there is an understanding problem between the way developers and users view the reports. I'm used to error, warning and info methods from a lot of development tools like compilers. But it seems most users don't understand a warning the same way. So probably we should find a better way to explain this situation. I don't even have to look past the warning dialog for my first complaint: Even if the list contains only warnings, the dialog title still reads: Data has errors. - That's what I mean by attitude problem; in my eyes it is totally wrong to *ever* tell a mapper that his data has errors. The validator can at most point out potential problems - but data has errors? As an expericed mapper I percieve that to be arrogance on JOSM's part, and as a newbie mapper I would certainly not proceed with uploading. I think after the next release (as it means translation issues) we should rephrase the wording and add some short descriptions texts, the validator is meant as an advince and it should not patronise. When people misunderstand that we need to make it clearer. * untagged way (warning) - perfectly ok if such a way is a relation member. You're not showing the warning if it is a multipolygon but there may be others you don't know of. I think this warning is nearly never a false positive. Thus warning status is valid. * unknown relation type (warning) - JOSM should never assume to be in possession of a full list of allowed relation types! Right, that it only knows certain types, but making it an Info-text makes it loosing its function. Here the you should be sure if you know better is required for users. * unnamed ways (warning) - I think it is perfectly normal to draw streets from aerial imagery and have no name for them. In most cases it is an mistake. Again this is a problem when the warning is misunderstood. * illegal tag/value combinations - someone seems to have had a field day here. 90% of these deserve to be thrown out. Only recently it complained about my man_made=pipeline - from reading the source I found out that it was expecting an extra tag with details about the pipeline. Yes. Here finetuning may be necessary. But this is a wide field and no generic solution, as each check has individual warning level. I think the main problem is that the validator is now by default enabled before download - something you can switch off, of course, but to the new mapper the Your data has errors message conveys: We don't want your data, please stop what you're doing! I agree, that can be a problem. So the solution must be to make clear what error, warning and other of JOSM validator really mean. And we need to state that in few words, or people wont read it. Also the online help for this needs extension probably. It is funny that both of us seem to have a desire to nanny JOSM users, just whenever you're doing it I complain and vice versa. Well, I think we agreed already in the past, that our opinions are equal in a lot of places, but we also have fields where we disagree a lot. Not that bad a situation at all, as usually it leads to results which are better than previous situation. Ciao -- http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available) ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
Am 05.03.2011 11:51, schrieb Dirk Stöcker: On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, Frederik Ramm wrote: In my eyes the validator does not have a problem with one specific check; it has an attitude problem. Until now I wasn't aware that it was *your* attitude I was criticizing when I said so ;) but I think the validator is nannying people too much, *especially* (and I checked that before writing it) since it is enabled by default on a new install. I asked some non-development users now and it seems there is an understanding problem between the way developers and users view the reports. I'm used to error, warning and info methods from a lot of development tools like compilers. But it seems most users don't understand a warning the same way. So probably we should find a better way to explain this situation. Yes, rethinking the wording of the message types and the messages might be a very good idea. E.g. unknown relation type (warning): If JOSM has no basis to judge if something is right or wrong, this is no good basis to issue a warning, this is certainly better an info like: Sorry, I don't know the relation type XY. A different story would be a checker for obvious spelling mistakes: Warning: The relation type rout should probably be route - and even that should be cautiously done. Regards, ULFL P.S: I'm always fixing compiler warnings to avoid later problems, but I've switched off the validator some time ago, as it was only a hassle and no real help for me. ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
On 03/04/2011 10:57 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote: To understand the severity of this, take this example: You are new to JOSM. You map a road and tag it highway=road. You hit upload. You get (emphasis by me): Data WITH ERRORS. Upload anyway? + Warnings + ILLEGAL tag/value combinations - temporary highway type So, highway=road is an error, and an illegal combination of a tag and value? Thankfully it doesn't complain when I write highway=raod. Maybe I should use highway=raod instead of highway=road as the latter is clearly illegal and an error. I think the main problem is that the validator is now by default enabled before download - something you can switch off, of course, but to the new mapper the Your data has errors message conveys: We don't want your data, please stop what you're doing! I agree with this, validator should NOT start automaticaly with JOSM. It shoud have a option to start it when you want. We lost some new OSM mappers because of this. Validator was making them angry with its constant warnings, street without names, ... and so on, and they stopped mapping. So please tune(tune, not turn) the validator down, or write extensive manual about all the possible error combinations it reports, and what to do... We who use it for years know what to do, but new useras are confused. ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
hbogner writes: We who use it for years know what to do, but new useras are confused. I agree. What might work for better nannying is to only run the validator on things they've changed. Otherwise they get asked to fix everything within the bounding box they downloaded. Even better than that would be to do validation continuously. Much better to catch an error right away. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
On 5-3-2011 18:37, Mike N wrote: On 3/5/2011 12:05 PM, Russ Nelson wrote: I agree. What might work for better nannying is to only run the validator on things they've changed. Otherwise they get asked to fix everything within the bounding box they downloaded. ? It already works this way for me. When you hit upload, yes. If you click Validate in the validator, it checks every object. -- Lennard ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
On Sat, 5 Mar 2011, hbogner wrote: We lost some new OSM mappers because of this. If the people are discouraged that easily then they would have gone soon anyway. Have you ever got a message/email from someone who thinks that you destroyed his work due to a simple modification. The validator is harmless compared to this. My father who does a lot more than I do gets these messages constantly and I got them a lot when I was more active. The time for basic mapping is over (at least in Germany and central europe) and tools like the validator are more and more important to get a useable database. JOSM's goal is not to have to ultimate freedom for a mapper. JOSM allows you to do nearly everything, but it does not encourage you to do so. The goal is a usable database following some unique standards. And it must be easier for a user to follow the standards than not to do it. Maybe in some cases the tests aren't perfectly correct, but this is to be expected as automatic detection of these topics is a very complicated issue and errors can't be prevented. When you find such problems, report them properly and they will be fixed when possible. If I judge this issue based on the ticket reports we get, than we have only minor problems with this. And half of the reports ask to add additional checks and not to remove some. So a note to these of you trying to convince me that we have a major problem with validator: This opinion does not match the statistical data that we have. Especially as validator had 80% installation count even before it moved into core. Ciao -- http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available) ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
Dirk Stöcker writes: So a note to these of you trying to convince me that we have a major problem with validator: This opinion does not match the statistical data that we have. Especially as validator had 80% installation count even before it moved into core. Not valid data because people were told to install the validator. Better data would be How often do people click No? -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
Hi, Dirk Stöcker wrote: If I judge this issue based on the ticket reports we get, than we have only minor problems with this. And half of the reports ask to add additional checks and not to remove some. That's because you have created a perfect user nannying environment and people react to that. It's an interesting challenge. Once you see that the validator will complain about certain things in a multipolygon relation but not about others, you immediately think: Oh well it should actually also complain about this, and that. And if someone does that together with that we should warn them too. And... I'm 100% sure that the people who ask for more checks are *not* those who say: This error always happens to me and I'd really be happy if the editor could tell me. These are the people who say I really think the others should be told to map like I do. So a note to these of you trying to convince me that we have a major problem with validator: This opinion does not match the statistical data that we have. Especially as validator had 80% installation count even before it moved into core. I'm not sure these statistics can be applied the way you apply them. How did you measure installation count? How many of those were auto-installed through the Windows installer which AFAIK bundled the validator with JOSM? At that time, was the validator already set to validate before uploading by default? How has the number and extend of checks be changed between then and now? Etc. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
Am 05.03.2011 21:27, schrieb Dirk Stöcker: On Sat, 5 Mar 2011, hbogner wrote: We lost some new OSM mappers because of this. If the people are discouraged that easily then they would have gone soon anyway. Have you ever got a message/email from someone who thinks that you destroyed his work due to a simple modification. The validator is harmless compared to this. My father who does a lot more than I do gets these messages constantly and I got them a lot when I was more active. Strange, I never got a single message like this since 2007 ... The time for basic mapping is over (at least in Germany and central europe) That's simply untrue, except for big cities. and tools like the validator are more and more important to get a useable database. JOSM's goal is not to have to ultimate freedom for a mapper. Is this JOSMs goal or your personal? JOSM allows you to do nearly everything, but it does not encourage you to do so. The goal is a usable database following some unique standards. And it must be easier for a user to follow the standards than not to do it. Again, is this JOSMs goal or your personal? E.g. it is not the goal of OSM (and it should not be the goal of JOSM) to warn about unknown relation types. Maybe in some cases the tests aren't perfectly correct, The last time I've tested it, the results were unjustified, overreacting, not helpful on how to fix it ... but this is to be expected as automatic detection of these topics is a very complicated issue and errors can't be prevented. As the experienced developer can't handle it, the unexperienced mapper has to deal with it - ouch! :-( When you find such problems, report them properly and they will be fixed when possible. If I judge this issue based on the ticket reports we get, than we have only minor problems with this. And half of the reports ask to add additional checks and not to remove some. If most people just switch off the validator because it's just bogus and brocken - which it is IMHO, it's no wonder that there are not much tickets about it. Why writing a ticket when you can easily get rid of that annoying stuff. If you want to have such a validator, it has to be as perfect as possible under all circumstances and the messages have to be very clear how to fix the issue. Otherwise it's just a waste of everyones time. Regards, ULFL ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
On Sat, 5 Mar 2011, Frederik Ramm wrote: If I judge this issue based on the ticket reports we get, than we have only minor problems with this. And half of the reports ask to add additional checks and not to remove some. That's because you have created a perfect user nannying environment and people react to that. It's an interesting challenge. Once you see that the validator will complain about certain things in a multipolygon relation but not about others, you immediately think: Oh well it should actually also complain about this, and that. And if someone does that together with that we should warn them too. And... This is actually irrelevant. The Trac bug report system only catches these people who are willing to report anyway. So the absolute count does not say a lot (only compared to other reports), but the type of reports we get is a useful measure. I'm 100% sure that the people who ask for more checks are *not* those who say: This error always happens to me and I'd really be happy if the editor could tell me. Well - Actually here you are wrong. One example is a person who wants the coastline checks moved from OTHER to WARN level, as it still happens often that coasts are destroyed. These are the people who say I really think the others should be told to map like I do. Very likely also this kind exists, but we aren't forced to agree to their request. So a note to these of you trying to convince me that we have a major problem with validator: This opinion does not match the statistical data that we have. Especially as validator had 80% installation count even before it moved into core. I'm not sure these statistics can be applied the way you apply them. How did you measure installation count? How many of those were auto-installed through I cannot measure installation count. the Windows installer which AFAIK bundled the validator with JOSM? At that Yes. Sure. And exactly this invalidates the opinion that moving validator into core changed the situation. Effectively it has been a de-facto core component for a long time now. time, was the validator already set to validate before uploading by default? This is default as long as I'm involved in JOSM development. How has the number and extend of checks be changed between then and now? Etc. The number of tests has been increased. The number of tests the users sees in default settings has been decreased a lot. Whether you and others like it or not - The opinion expressed on mailinglists like this (and talk-de and others) is not equal to the real-world. Thus I do not base my judgment on these discussions, but I try to find better data. And if that data shows me a totally different view, then I'm very sceptical. Software users aren't that dumb as most want to tell me. They are usually much more flexible that most of you seem to assume. P.S. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be improvements in this area. Ciao -- http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available) ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
Lennard l...@xs4all.nl writes: On 5-3-2011 18:37, Mike N wrote: On 3/5/2011 12:05 PM, Russ Nelson wrote: I agree. What might work for better nannying is to only run the validator on things they've changed. Otherwise they get asked to fix everything within the bounding box they downloaded. ? It already works this way for me. When you hit upload, yes. If you click Validate in the validator, it checks every object. ... if nothing is selected. Otherwise it checks the selection. I quite like that behavior. Matthias ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
On 03/05/2011 09:27 PM, Dirk Stöcker wrote: The time for basic mapping is over (at least in Germany and central europe) and tools like the validator are more and more important to get a useable database. Germany is NOT the rest of the world, we still have a lot of basic maping to do. Primary roads are almost finished mapping, secondary are at 95% but tertiary are at 35%, and there are other roads, and extra tags for every road, max speed, width, lanes, surface... :D Basic mapping will continue for years, Bing is not present evereywhere, gpx logs do not cover everything, there are empty places 10's of kilometers accros, populated places have only a few main roads, ... We (group of long time users) need the beginners to map their locations as best as they know, adn fill those empty places. Even if it's not valid 100%. We have our own scripts that find errors, and there is openstreetbugs, keepright, and other tools. We teach new users on the way. Validator is nice tool, but we have new users who know only basics of JOSM. One of them is 60 yeared monutain biker, 56 yeard mountain climber, ... :D I spend hours and hours explaining it to them that roads don't have to have a name if they don tknow it and that they can ignore that warning ... ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
PS. I personaly use validator when fixing errors found with other tools, but i know how to use it :D ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
[josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
recently I started to use multipolygons to save ways. For instance I draw a closed way and tag it with barrier=fence. Then I make a multipolygon-relation where I add the way as outer and assign a landuse. The Josm-Validator gives me a strange warning about this: Style for outer way mismatches. What does this mean? cheers, Martin ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
Hi, M?rtin Koppenhoefer wrote: recently I started to use multipolygons to save ways. For instance I draw a closed way and tag it with barrier=fence. Then I make a multipolygon-relation where I add the way as outer and assign a landuse. The Josm-Validator gives me a strange warning about this: Style for outer way mismatches. What does this mean? It means that the validator is *much* too over-eager and needs to be toned down. I have seen people break their perfect mapping because of it. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
2011/3/4 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org: It means that the validator is *much* too over-eager and needs to be toned down. I have seen people break their perfect mapping because of it. +1 (there is also warnings about close way ends where the way is a barrier). IMHO JOSM should not encourage people at all to tag the outer way with area tags and not the multipolygon, even for simple cases. I know that you can ignore errors and warnings (permanently in the validator), but I don't do that because I fear that I might miss a useful warning, and I guess that other user behave similar, so toning it down might be a good solution. cheers, Martin ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer wrote: recently I started to use multipolygons to save ways. For instance I draw a closed way and tag it with barrier=fence. Then I make a multipolygon-relation where I add the way as outer and assign a landuse. The Josm-Validator gives me a strange warning about this: Style for outer way mismatches. What does this mean? Please make an example which shows this. This warning essentially means that you have NO style for the multipolygon and multiple outer ways, which have different styles. This means that it is not clear what the multipolygon actually should be. Ciao -- http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
2011/3/4 Dirk Stöcker openstreet...@dstoecker.de: Please make an example which shows this. This warning essentially means that you have NO style for the multipolygon and multiple outer ways, which have different styles. This means that it is not clear what the multipolygon actually should be. way 102703913 cheers, Martin ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, Frederik Ramm wrote: recently I started to use multipolygons to save ways. For instance I draw a closed way and tag it with barrier=fence. Then I make a multipolygon-relation where I add the way as outer and assign a landuse. The Josm-Validator gives me a strange warning about this: Style for outer way mismatches. What does this mean? It means that the validator is *much* too over-eager and needs to be toned down. I have seen people break their perfect mapping because of it. Frederik. Most of the time you have valuable comments and ideas, but a comment like this is a hit in my face which I don't like. This warning has sense and I would suggest to have a look into the code before issuing such nonsense. Maybe the code has bugs, but simply saying that I made a lot of crap is not the way to go. And yes I take that one a bit personal, as it is basically my code. Validator has been tuned a lot in the last months to reach a proper balance between warnings and useful output. All your posts in the last weeks show that you don't follow the JOSM develop close enough to have a good judgment on these issues. So before blaming all and everything start to get more in touch with the recent code base and when necessary file bug reports where fine tuning is needed. Ciao -- http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available) ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
2011/3/4 Dirk Stöcker openstreet...@dstoecker.de: Validator has been tuned a lot in the last months to reach a proper balance between warnings and useful output. All your posts in the last weeks show that you don't follow the JOSM develop close enough to have a good judgment on these issues. So before blaming all and everything start to get more in touch with the recent code base and when necessary file bug reports where fine tuning is needed. This is all true, and it really is a very useful piece of JOSM, no doubt. That's why we should try to get rid of warnings that are no errors, because if there are too many warnings people will simply ignore all of them (I guess you already know this and see it the same way). Of course it is not possible that the validator understands every possible situation on earth which might be mapped correctly. In this case he would have to know that the barrier=fence is a linear feature and not describing the area. Another issue where I get warnings are overlapping areas (which is not using a multipolygon for adjacent areas, so their ways are partly overlapping). Personally I ignore them but I know of quite some situations where other mappers disconnected areas because of this (also pedestrian areas mapped as squares which connected to a road). I think that this is not a warning that should be turned on by default, because validator can't know about the topology, and always using a multipolygon when 2 areas are touching (to reuse this part of the way) is overkill. cheers, Martin ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer wrote: Please make an example which shows this. This warning essentially means that you have NO style for the multipolygon and multiple outer ways, which have different styles. This means that it is not clear what the multipolygon actually should be. way 102703913 Seems to be a bug. During the code moving around of code between multipolygon drawing and validator this must have bee mix up. Ciao -- http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer wrote: Another issue where I get warnings are overlapping areas (which is not using a multipolygon for adjacent areas, so their ways are partly overlapping). Personally I ignore them but I know of quite some situations where other mappers disconnected areas because of this (also pedestrian areas mapped as squares which connected to a road). I think that this is not a warning that should be turned on by default, because validator can't know about the topology, and always using a multipolygon when 2 areas are touching (to reuse this part of the way) is overkill. This is already an informational warning which is not shown by default. Ciao -- http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
Re: [josm-dev] validator question, multipolygons
Dirk, Dirk Stöcker wrote: Maybe the code has bugs, but simply saying that I made a lot of crap is not the way to go. And yes I take that one a bit personal, as it is basically my code. I wasn't aware of this, I thought it had been done by someone else. I have, however, often been asked why does the validator complain about X and my only answer was probably it's over-eager... AGAIN. So maybe you have taken off a lot of it's edge in the last months (and you are right, I haven't followed recent developments, I wasn't even aware that you were actively developing validator code), and maybe these situations have been fixed meanwhile, but certainly more than once in the past I have cursed validator for giving people all the wrong ideas and in fact introducing a streamlined kind of mapping which has never been OSM style. So before blaming all and everything start to get more in touch with the recent code base and when necessary file bug reports where fine tuning is needed. In my eyes the validator does not have a problem with one specific check; it has an attitude problem. Until now I wasn't aware that it was *your* attitude I was criticizing when I said so ;) but I think the validator is nannying people too much, *especially* (and I checked that before writing it) since it is enabled by default on a new install. I don't even have to look past the warning dialog for my first complaint: Even if the list contains only warnings, the dialog title still reads: Data has errors. - That's what I mean by attitude problem; in my eyes it is totally wrong to *ever* tell a mapper that his data has errors. The validator can at most point out potential problems - but data has errors? As an expericed mapper I percieve that to be arrogance on JOSM's part, and as a newbie mapper I would certainly not proceed with uploading. I'll give some examples for checks that I think are nannying too much, all these are active by default: * untagged way (warning) - perfectly ok if such a way is a relation member. You're not showing the warning if it is a multipolygon but there may be others you don't know of. * unknown relation type (warning) - JOSM should never assume to be in possession of a full list of allowed relation types! * unnamed ways (warning) - I think it is perfectly normal to draw streets from aerial imagery and have no name for them. * illegal tag/value combinations - someone seems to have had a field day here. 90% of these deserve to be thrown out. Only recently it complained about my man_made=pipeline - from reading the source I found out that it was expecting an extra tag with details about the pipeline. To understand the severity of this, take this example: You are new to JOSM. You map a road and tag it highway=road. You hit upload. You get (emphasis by me): Data WITH ERRORS. Upload anyway? + Warnings + ILLEGAL tag/value combinations - temporary highway type So, highway=road is an error, and an illegal combination of a tag and value? Thankfully it doesn't complain when I write highway=raod. Maybe I should use highway=raod instead of highway=road as the latter is clearly illegal and an error. I think the main problem is that the validator is now by default enabled before download - something you can switch off, of course, but to the new mapper the Your data has errors message conveys: We don't want your data, please stop what you're doing! It is funny that both of us seem to have a desire to nanny JOSM users, just whenever you're doing it I complain and vice versa. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ josm-dev mailing list josm-dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
