On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 8:13 AM, Ian Dees <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 6:56 AM, Jaak Laineste <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> Hi, >> as you may now, during GSoC QGIS was ported to Android tablets >> (http://hub.qgis.org/projects/quantum-gis/wiki/QGIS_Mobile_GSoC_2011). >> Merkaator has technically same base elements: Qt, GEOS, PROJ.4 etc, so >> based on this experience porting of Merkaator could be also possible >> with much smaller fuss. It should be even smaller work than getting >> JOSM working under Android. >> >> Question: do you know anyone who really would need and use it? > > > Jaak, > > Porting JOSM to Android would be an interesting academic task, but several > problems lead me to believe it would not be useful for general use: > > - java.awt is nowhere to be found on Android. JOSM's rendering engine would > have to be completely re-written. > - javax.swing is nowhere to be found on Android. JOSM's UI system would have > to be completely re-written. > - JOSM's UI is based on menus and keyboard shortcuts. These don't have good > analogs in Android and would have to be re-thought. > > I'd much rather see the time spent solving these problems put towards a > general purpose editor that is specifically designed for a tablet. Maybe > something general enough that an iOS and Android developer could use the > same design with platform-specific tweaks.
All valid points, however it may be useful to reuse much of the non-GUI code for handling file loading, validation, search, etc. Or perhaps it may be more worthwhile to write a nice HTML5 app that can work on iOS, Android, and the web. I think the hardest thing is coming up with a design that works well on tablets. I think first and foremost it should offer a simple and robust way to edit POIs. A good preset system is a must (share with Potlatch2 or JOSM, don't create a new one!). Allow ways to be created both by tapping nodes and drawing (with simplification algorithm). And definitely have online and offline modes. I'd encourage you to create a wiki article to try and define what should go in to a tablet app. -Josh _______________________________________________ dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
