[OpenLayers-Dev] OSM editor

[Eric Lemoine]

Interesting, thanks for your feedback. Eric

2008/10/17, Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt at metacarta.com>:
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 09:56:13PM +0200, Eric Lemoine wrote:
>> Hi.
>>
>> Is anyone aware of initiatives on developing an OpenLayers-based OSM
>> editor?
>>
>> I just think such a thing would be great :-)
>>
>> We already have an OSM Format, having an OSM Protocol would make sense to
>> me.
>
> It's a hard problem.
>
> OSM is topological -- meaning each 'node' is an item. Editing a
> linestring is not editing a linestring -- it's editing the components
> that the linestring is made up of.
>
> The current OSM format stores some of the information that you'd need to
> actually edit points, but not enough: for example, we don't parse the
> attributes attached to a node that we're putting into a linestring. As a
> result, if (for example) you were editing a subway line, where the stops
> were sharing nodes with the line, and you dragged a station marker, you
> would not have enough information to save that node to the server
> without throwing away information.
>
> Additionally, if you imagine a street intersection, in OpenLayers we
> represent that as two linestrings (seperate). In OSM, if you edit the
> intersection, both lines change (because they share the node). However,
> this would be difficult to implement in an OL based editor.
>
> I've done a variety of work on editing OSM *attributes* via OpenLayers:
> indeed, simply the displaying of data within the OSM website (zoom in,
> open the LayerSwitcher, click "Data" layer) is done with OL vectors, and
> was originally coded by me. In general, I think this is a valuable
> effort to pursue -- especially within the OSM website, where you can
> implement things so that you have an easier, attribute only way for
> people to name streets, etc. I would say this is a valuable pursuit,
> worth chasing down, especially if you're up for a bit of rails-related
> Javascript.
>
> However, an entirely OSM editor would be difficult, and I expect not the
> most productive use of people's time. Especially since potlatch -- the
> flash based eitor -- is so competent, and coding for flash/AS1 is very
> similar to Javascript: You can probably help improve Potlatch without
> much/any flash knowledge, and you wouldn't have to reimplement the base
> that Potlatch has gotten down pretty well.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Christopher Schmidt
> MetaCarta
>