I‘ve seen it mentioned a few times as being superior to the iD editor but the learning curve seems somewhat steep. I started mapping areas in Vietnam that haven‘t gotten much love so far and I encountered a few limitations with the iD editor. The buildings in Vietnam are a pain to map. Is it better in the long run to learn JOSM for this use case?
Edit: Thanks for all the responses! I took the plunge and am now editing in JOSM :)
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I almost exclusively edit with JOSM now.
It’s intimidating because there is a lot going on and there are a lot of buttons everywhere. That makes it tricky to find what you need.
Take it slow, and only learn the parts that you need to complete your task. Then you can slowly start learning more and more.
The biggest change is that you will have to manually download the area you want to work on. The iD editor automatically downloads where you are zoomed in on. JOSM, you need to click the download button and then select the area.
I find one of the big advantages of JOSM is the shortcuts, and those simply take time to memorize them one by one.
You’ll want to make use of plugins, too. Under Edit > Preferences > Plugins, you’ll want to select these
building_tools
utilsplugin2
mapwithaiThose provide a lot of helpful tools for working with buildings.
Another thing to be mindful of is the Validator. It’s a helpful tool that will automatically check all of the work that you have done to make sure it meets best practices, like if you forgot a tag or if two tags don’t match.
It runs when you click upload, and it will only validate the work you have done. If you manually run it, it will validate everything that’s been loaded even if you haven’t worked on it.
Consider the warnings, but I often find there are a few warnings that don’t apply to what I have changed, and they can be ignored. You simply just continue the upload.
Yes. JOSM is pretty much the default editor for serious mappers, by far the one that most effort has gone into to make it powerful.
I like it for adding a lot of buildings with the
building_toolsplugin, and I use iD for almost everything else, but I know some people use JOSM for everything.As others have said, the building tools plugin easily makes it worth it. Where i map there’s a lot of terraces too so being able to automatically split an area up into even chunks has saved me countless hours. Once you’ve used it for a while, you’ll be able to map a lot faster than on iD
Worth learning? Yes.
Worth using? It depends, I don’t think that a perfect tool can exist. I frequently use:
- CoMaps to quickly edit POIs, since I already use it for navigation
- StreetComplete to fix more complex tags when I’m outside
- iD when the geometry is mostly ok and just needs some finishing touches
- JOSM only for big projects or full remaps with weird buildings and roads.
I find that this variety makes the experience more enjoyable. For quick and easy jobs I edit on the spot, otherwise I add to a backlog and wait for the next rainy sunday to spend it mapping.
Yes, josm is not that difficult. Just the first steps are difficult/new. You’ll get used to it very quickly.
@simsala The BuildingsTools plugin alone is worth JOSM. I mainly use JOSM for that plugin and for editing relations. I still use iD for other stuff.
BuildingsTools allows you to draw a building rectangle with three clicks. Moreover it keeps the next building orthogonal so you only need two clicks. This is best if the buildings are oriented along the same axis.
