Slides presented at HOT Summit.

1. 201 Advanced OSM
Editing
by Chris Zontine
Welcome to

2. • OSM member for 2 years
• M.A. Geography, B.S. Computer Science
• Focused on the North American markets
• Primarily edited road networks
Who am I?

3. Relations
Map Styles
Plugins
Presets
Tips
Workshop
Advanced OSM Editing Agenda

4. Relations
Map Styles
Plugins
Presets
Tips
Workshop
Advanced OSM Editing Agenda

5. What is a relation?
• A collection of primitives (Node, Way, another Relation)
• Relations can have Roles
• A Role is defined by the type of relation. Examples:
- inner, outer of a boundary
- a cardinal direction, forward, backward for highways,
stop from bus route
• Primitives of a relation are ordered

6. Relation examples
• a boundary relation - a multipolygon
- e.g. ‘admin_level 8’ ; relation id=186784
• a highway network relation
- e.g. ‘route=10’; relation id=1013380
• a bus route relation
- e.g. ‘Broad Street Line’ ; relation id=966946
• a river relation - a multipolygon
- e.g. ‘Columbia River’ and ‘Cottonwood Island’ ; relation id
=104856
• Helpful website to visualize relation outside of JOSM:
ra.osmsurround.org/index

7. Relation examples continued
• a river relation - a multipolygon
- e.g. ‘Columbia River’ and ‘Cottonwood Island’
- relation id =104856

8. Relations
Map Styles
Plugins
Presets
Tips
Workshop
Advanced OSM Editing Agenda

9. What is a Map Style?
A “style” controls how the map is rendered in JOSM
• Default style is JOSM default (MapCSS)
• Can create custom style
• Follows the MapCSS protocol (mapcss.org) to interpret
key/value pairs in the Map
• Unique HOT defined style, HDM (hot.openstreetmap.org/
updates/hdmjosm)

10. Map Style example
Scenario: highway=residential AND there is no “name=*” tag
JOSM Default (MapCSS) way[highway][!name]
{
width: 3;
dashes: 10,10;
dashes-background-color: red;
}

11. Steps to load and create a style
Load the HDM (Humanitarian Data Model) style
• Preferences -> Map Settings -> Map Style tab
• Select the HDM by HOT style sheet and move to
the active styles section
• Check the box next to HDM to activate
Create a new style
• Use text editor to create or modify existing file
• Add MapCSS style parameters
• Load to JOSM
• Details: josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/
Styles#CreateStyle
Map Settings
JOSM icon

12. Relations
Map Styles
Plugins
Presets
Tips
Workshop
Advanced OSM Editing Agenda

13. What are plugins?
• User contributed “widgets”
providing extended functionality
• Address specific community
needs
• A few useful plugins:
- OpenData - import / export
various data formats
- reltoolbox - relation editing
- utilsplugin2 - various utilities
- FieldPapers - field survey tools
• To set or review: Preferences -
Plugin icon

14. Plugins - OpenData
• Provides an interface for importing / exporting external
data
• Supports numerous data types: CSV, EXCEL, KML, GML,
SHP, Zip, OpenDocument
• Wiki details: wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM/Plugins/
OpenData

15. Plugins - reltoolbox
• Relation Toolbox is an all-in-one panel for creating and
working with relations and, specifically, multipolygons.
• Create, modify, or delete a relation
• Create, modify, or delete a role
• Wiki details: wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM/Plugins/
Relation_Toolbox
multipolygon example

16. Plugins - utilsplugin2
• Exposes ‘More tools’ and ‘Selection’ menu items
• Number of utilities that ‘makes life easier’
• Copy tags from previous selection (More tools)
• All connected ways (Selection)
• Wiki details: josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Help/Plugin/
UtilsPlugin2
Exposing More tools menu Exposing Selection menu

17. Plugins - Field Papers
• Field Papers (http://fieldpapers.org/) is a web-based tool for
easily creating a printable map atlas for anywhere in the world.
• OSM wiki details: wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM/Plugins/
FieldPapers and wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Field_Papers
• LearnOSM reference: learnosm.org/en/beginner/field-papers/

18. Plugins - Field Papers continued
• Field Papers maps can be opened using OpenStreetMap’s
editing tools: (1) iD editor; or (2) Potlatch; or (3) JOSM
Field Paper in JOSM

19. • Relations
• Map Styles
• Plugins
• Presets
• Tips
• Workshop
Advanced OSM Editing Agenda

20. What are presets?
• A predefined set of tags which can be associated with a
specified feature type
• Allows for quick attribution of complex features when
building out a region

21. Presets - continued
• HOT has a long list of presets
- export.hotosm.org/en/uploads/presets
- refer to LearnOSM.org (creating custom presets in the
intermediate guide) for help on this

22. Presets continued
• Activate
• Preferences - Map Settings - Tagging Presets OR
Presets menu - Preset preferences
• Tagging Presets tab. Click ‘+’ on Active presets panel.

23. • Relations
• Map Styles
• Plugins
• Presets
• Tips
• Workshop
Advanced OSM Editing Agenda

24. Tips - Filtering
Un-clutter the Map Display using filtering
• Click the filter icon
• Add a filter string for the tags of interest (e.g. highway=*,
boundary=*, landuse=*)

25. Tips - Tools menu for basic connectivity
Use many options on this menu:
Reverse direction, Create circle, Join Node to Way, Unglue
Ways, Orthogonalized Shape.

26. Tips - Connecting Ways
A sure method to connect a Way to a Node
Step 1: highlight FROM node
Step 2: Control highlight TO node
Step 3: Merge nodes (shortcut m)

27. Tips - OSM Search
Interested in an OSM subject but don’t want to search the
entire universe?
• Use bit.ly/osmsearch - a specialized Google search
Openstreetmap domain only
OpenStreetMap Forum
Talk-ca mailing list
Proposed features forum
OpenStreetMap wiki
Example: search for great lakes boundary
OpenStreetMap PDF report

28. Tips - TagInfo
What is an accepted tag value? How is it used?
• Home page: taginfo.openstreetmap.org
• Search for a key or tag or click on the Reports or click on any
item in the KEYS TAGS or RELATIONS
• Very versatile utility

29. Tips - Feature Listing
Browse the documentation for all OSM features
• wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features
• Review acceptable tagging in Taginfo

30. Tips - Advanced object info
Display a “condensed” view of an object
• highlight object (i.e. node, way, relation)
• PC control i; Mac command i. Display to JOSM or Web.
• Option is on the View menu.

31. Tips - History of object
Display all the history of an object from OSM Planet
• highlight object (i.e. node, way, relation)
• Control - h displays the History panel. Display to JOSM or
Web.
• Option is on the View menu.

32. Tips - Message a user
Use OSM internal message service
• determine user name:
- from Advanced object info (either JOSM or Web)
- from History of object (either JOSM or Web)
• fill in user name:
- www.openstreetmap.org/user/<user name>
• Click Send Message

33. Tips - Increase Memory
Allocate additional RAM for use by JOSM
• Especially useful when loading large external datasets
• MAC
• Add the following to either your .bash_login
or .bash_profile (change jar version) where 2g is the
memory override
alias josm="java -jar -Xmx2g /Applications/JOSM.app/Contents/Java/
josm-snapshot-7906.jar”
• Start JOSM from the command line with alias ‘josm’
• PC
• Add to a *.bat file where 2g is the memory override:
• java -Xmx2g -jar <path>.jar

34. • Relations
• Map Styles
• Plugins
• Presets
• Tips
• Workshop
Advanced OSM Editing Agenda

35. Workshop
1. Build a relation
2. Create Map Style
3. Create a HOT preset

36. Q and A?

37. contact info: chris@zontine.com