Have to press + to enter next node in track

[khelbley]

Have to press + to enter next node in track

[bryceco]

Without having a dedicated drawing mode I don't see how to implement this without creating confusion. I see two issues:

• How do you terminate drawing a way? In Potlatch you press escape, which feels clunky on the desktop and is unavailable on the phone.
• If the user selects a single node, or the last node of a way, in order to view its properties and then taps elsewhere there is no way to determine if the user intends to begin drawing a way versus just moving on to some other activity.

[joshdoe]

I agree this would be nice to have, at least for the basic task of drawing a simple (usually square) building, to add a POI as an area rather than a point, and also to add a short road/driveway. I don't think this app should be designed for general editing of ways, other than what's there already and this simple form of drawing new ways/areas.

You could have another button besides + that allows this continual drawing, but that would start to clutter the UI. A better option might be to do a long press on the + to bring up a menu with something like "Draw way" and "Draw area".

[khelbley]

That is a very good point, and to be honest I hadn't thought through exactly what the implementation would look like.

I was thinking along the lines of dual use buttons - like GPS button. (starting with GPS off)

• tap and it enables gps location
• tap again and it disables gps location
• press and hold - and it starts 'search for location'

In this manner: could the + button be extended to have a second mode. Press and hold to toggle on 'tap for next point', press and hold to return default mode of pressing + to create next node.

When second mode was active; turn + button yellow or green (some color that fits your scheme) to give feedback to the user that this alternate mode is active.

to answer your specific use cases with the implementation I propose

1. to terminate drawing the way you would press and hold + to return to standard method as it is today - and then tap away to leave the edit/creation mode

2. selecting nodes would only be possible in default mode of '+ to create next node'

now that I think about this I see at least several things to consider in this implementation

• zoom and pan would only be active in '+ to create next node' mode.
• if you don't tap the point exactly where you want it, you will need to press <- back arrow to undo the placement and then place again - otherwise you would change mode back to '+ to create next node' and move

I may not be a typical use case - the majority of my edits/contributions thus far have been areas and lines.

[bryceco]

On the iPad it is possible to zoom in enough to tap a specific point reasonably accurately, but on the phone it is really hard and you always end up dragging the node a little bit, so either approach requires both a tap and a drag. I also forgot to mention the case where the next node location is underneath the pushpin label.

On the phone it is really hard to enter a large detailed building, or one of your longer trails, without panning and zooming during the process. Moving in and out of edit mode to pan is a deal killer.

A long-press that activates a mode without the pushpin, changes the + icon to "something else", and terminates when the "something else" is pressed again seems worth experimenting with though.

[khelbley]

I have been using Ipad2 so far so had not considered the limitations of a smaller display. I"ll have more input after i use it on the 4s for a bit.

[bryceco]

The 1.4 release allows you to directly draw ways: tapping the screen while holding down + will add nodes wherever you tap. You can quickly add a bunch of nodes along a curving road this way, for example.