OpenStreetMap
A new version of Potlatch 2 with several improvements and bugfixes:
- ‘New-style’ multipolygons are supported, where the tags are placed on the relation rather than the outer way. When you edit such a multipolygon, look at the bottom of the tag editor; you’ll see that it’s displaying the relation tags rather than the way. If you do want to change the tags on the way, you can choose that from the little dropdown menu there.
- Pop-up dialogue boxes are now generally resizable.
- In the Advanced tag view, long tag values now wrap onto multiple lines.
- The background menu is now usable on smaller screens.
- A ‘Clear all’ button on the Bookmarks menu.
- Shift-drag to zoom into a particular area; shift-click + or - to zoom three levels at a time; and you can now zoom out beyond zoom level 14, in which case no data will be displayed or loaded.
- Shift-< and > jump 10 nodes at a time along a way.
- Code now compiles with Apache Flex as well as with (older) Adobe Flex.
- Plus a bunch of other small fixes.
Potlatch 2 is somewhere between ‘active development’ and ‘maintenance mode’: there’s no massive new features that I’m planning, but I intend to keep making small improvements to it along these lines, plus extra features as and when I’m doing some mapping and figure out a way to make it easier or quicker to use. OSM is lucky to have such an excellent default editor in iD, which gives P2 the freedom to develop as an efficient and comfortable editor for those who like its way of doing things.
Discussion
Comment from nebulon42 on 25 March 2017 at 10:02
Wow, that was a quick release. Many thanks for the effort to support new-style multipolygons!
Comment from sulagaloh on 26 March 2017 at 08:12
Thank you very much for Potlatch 2.5! The quick new approach to the tags of a multpolygon is great. But I’d prefer to have the way’s tags and MP-memberships (with role) displayed first. The jolly little dropdown menu then can be used for quickly changing to the wanted MP, but only then, which saves time. Some OSM users tried to get me to using JOSM instead of Potlatch. But the workflow with JOSM ist much more clumsy (more clicks for the same result), so I hope that Potlatch will further have it’s advantages or even more. Thanks again!
Comment from Aury88 on 26 March 2017 at 09:12
thank you very much for your great work ! potlatch 2.* remain my favorite online editor :-)
Comment from ghost_07 on 27 March 2017 at 09:24
Congrats with the release. Is there any hotkey to cycle through relations on the way?
Comment from Stereo on 27 March 2017 at 13:58
Congratulations!
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editor_usage_stats shows that Potlatch still has a big bunch of users, which is a testament to its quality. Thank you for your work on it.
Comment from metatech on 28 March 2017 at 19:15
Hello, Potlach 2 is the only editor I have been using for 4 years, and I hope it will last for long. I have one problem to report though : since the 2.5 update, some keyboard shortcuts do not work anymore consistently. They work at the beginning of an editing session, but after a few operations (adding nodes and ways, saving, …), they stop working (most of the time, but not always). For instance : “H” for history, “C” for closing changeset, “+” for adding new value, “Z” for undo, “T” for switching between simple and advanced view. The problem is reproduceable on Chrome Mac, Firefox Mac and Chrome Windows. Has anyone experienced the same problem ? Thanks, metatech
Comment from Richard on 28 March 2017 at 19:20
@metatech: hm. That’ll be related to dialogue boxes appearing on the screen - one of the changes in 2.5 is that the normal keypresses are blocked when (for example) the save dialogue is on the screen. It should restore them when the dialogue is closed, but it sounds like it isn’t doing so. If you could come up with steps to reproduce this consistently that’d be a huge help.
@ghost_07: good idea! @sulagaloh: hopefully a keyboard shortcut to select the way would fix your issue; I’ll look into that.
Comment from metatech on 28 March 2017 at 19:42
The shortest scenario I have is the following URL : http://www.openstreetmap.org/edit#map=18/50.41449/4.47683 then create a way from the big building to the way 314699213, select as “service road”. Then select way 314699213, and press “H” (which has no effect). Thanks for looking into this…
Comment from Richard on 28 March 2017 at 20:23
Thanks. Probably the tag selector getting in the way even though it’s closed - I’ve had that problem before. I’ll take a look.
Comment from kucai on 29 March 2017 at 02:39
would you kindly write a JOSM plugin for that “jumping nodes along a way”? That’s a feature I really like about Potlatch, it makes easy work of aligning a 20km stretch of rural highway to newly available sat image.
Comment from Richard on 29 March 2017 at 08:00
Heh - someone can write a JOSM plugin to do that but it’ll have to be someone who uses JOSM, understands the JOSM codebase and has more than a passing knowledge of Java, none of which is me!
Comment from Richard on 31 March 2017 at 13:55
@metatech Now fixed in the code, will be fixed on osm.org next time it’s deployed.
Comment from metatech on 31 March 2017 at 18:22
@Richard Thanks for the fix. I will certainly test it once it’s deployed, please tell me when it is… Thanks.
Comment from DaveF on 2 April 2017 at 12:34
Hi Similar to @metatech I had problems with some shortcuts. For me ‘H’ history only worked on polygons, but it appears to have sorted itself. I’ll keep a check on it.
Simialr to @sulagaloh I’d prefer the way of a relation to be displayed as the default. I don’t think contributors need to amend relation tags that often. (A primary purpose of relations was to reduce tag editing)
I’m sorry to say I’m finding the Shift-drag to zoom irritating. Shift-selecting a way to insert a node in P2 is quite finickity. I find I often miss on the first click & it defaults to the window-zoom. How many use this new way to zoom? I’m finding Left-click-pan & mouse wheel zoom more convenient. Zoom window is a hangover from AutoCAD in the nineties. Could an option to turn if off be added?
Thanks for implementing the non loading of data, but I’d be happy for it to kick in at level 15 instead of 13, especially over urban, heavily tagged areas where I’m still receiving the “problem loading data” dialog & a long delaying while panning.
Cheers DaveF
Comment from Richard on 2 April 2017 at 12:54
The reason for defaulting to the multipolygon relation is that standard practice is now that, in the case of a multipolygon, tags should be on the relation. So if you’re tagging a building with a hole, the relation should be tagged building=yes (as well as type=multipolygon), and the constituent ways should be untagged. No other type of relation is automatically selected. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relation:multipolygon, https://github.com/osmlab/fixing-polygons-in-osm/issues/15 etc.
Shift-drag needs finessing to stop accidental zooms, rather than disabling entirely, and I’ll do that when I have a spare minute. There’ll be an option to customise the maximum data level in a future version.
Comment from DaveF on 2 April 2017 at 13:18
I understand how relations should be tagged. I’ve been doing it that way for years, which is why I’m surprised to hear the technique now described as ‘new’.
However, as with all relations, the tagging is usually an initial edit & only occasionally requires amending. I believe contributors will more likely want to check the polygon ways for (in)correct tags (valid tags can still be added to individual polygons), and to ensure the role is correct.
I look forward to the other improvements you mention.
Comment from ghost_07 on 10 April 2017 at 10:05
As for me I would also vote for tags on lines by default. And for the hotkey for this as well
Comment from joost schouppe on 11 April 2017 at 09:42
I had hoped the update would have fixed the issue with editor-layer-index imagery not being available in Potlatch. Unfortunately not the case.
Comment from Richard on 11 April 2017 at 09:44
What issue is that?
Comment from joost schouppe on 11 April 2017 at 09:51
The list there does not seem to be used by Potlatch, and I understood that it it should (as in: is programmed to do so). I’ve only checked with the imagery available in Belgium.
Comment from Richard on 11 April 2017 at 09:57
The list absolutely is used by P2.
There are two things that might be relevant:
Comment from joost schouppe on 11 April 2017 at 10:02
Oh, both seem to apply :) Some of the layers are in fact 16th century state of the art. And all of them seem to be missing from that JSON file. I’ll follow up on their issue tracker.
Comment from Richard on 11 April 2017 at 10:03
Cool, thank you. (I misspoke about the 16th century though. P2 does support shapefiles and they’re probably early-medieval.)
Comment from joost schouppe on 11 April 2017 at 14:13
Ooh, noticed another issue: when you click on an inner way of a relation, you get the relation tags (but the outer way is not selected), and there seems to be no way to edit the properties of the inner way (say a residential area within a meadow)
Comment from Richard on 11 April 2017 at 14:16
Does using the new menu at the bottom not work? It does for me on (say) the inner way of Worcester Cathedral at http://www.openstreetmap.org/edit#map=19/52.18845/-2.22070 .
Comment from joost schouppe on 11 April 2017 at 14:22
Yes it does. Thanks. Sorry.
Comment from joost schouppe on 11 April 2017 at 21:20
Looks like the json you point at is not updated anymore. The correct link is mentioned here: https://github.com/osmlab/editor-layer-index/issues/305
Comment from metatech on 13 April 2017 at 16:54
Hi Richard, Do you have any idea of when the new version will deployed on osm.org ? I am still encountering the bug with the disabled shortcuts. Thanks, metatech
Comment from metatech on 13 April 2017 at 16:54
Hi Richard, Do you have any idea of when the new version will deployed on osm.org ? I am still encountering the bug with the disabled shortcuts. Thanks, metatech
Comment from joost schouppe on 14 April 2017 at 07:54
New version is online! The imagery has been updated (and some of those QA layers are gone again)
Comment from DaveF on 14 April 2017 at 16:26
Hi joost could you expand on your points. I’m struggling ot notice a difference.
Richard. I’ve tried getting used to relation tags being displayed as the default, but I still find it inconvenient, especially when checking for MPs tagged the ‘old’ way, ironically.
DaveF
Comment from metatech on 16 April 2017 at 15:03
Thanks Joost, the shortcuts issue is now solved !
Comment from DaveF on 6 May 2017 at 20:33
Sorry, but I’m still not convinced displaying relations by default is user friendly. To delete them a way has to be selected first.
Comment from DaveF on 6 May 2017 at 20:37
Correction: To delete /and/ select & deselect all ways.