Friday, February 29. 2008
merkaartor, another editor for OpenStreetMap
After some more »out of memory«-messages by josm, I thought it's time to look out for alternatives.For the openstreetmap-project, the two main editors are josm (java) and potlach (flash). I think using java probably wasn't a very wise decision (I still wonder how an app can get »out of memory« after loading about 5 MB of images, do they create a pixel class and store every pixel in an object?) and I don't like flash either.
There's another project called merkaartor and today I had a look. My first feeling is that it's promising. It has good performance, it does nice live-rendering and it supports the basic features (adding nodes and ways, up/downloading stuff to the osm-system).
Sure, comparing to the large list of plugin features josm has, it's limited. Maybe I'll try to hack in some bits I'm missing at the moment.
In my continuing effort to improve gentoo for geo-related stuff, I've just added a merkaartor package to portage.
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Sorry if that was obvious, but you do know about the -Xmx1024m etc switch, right?
Other than that, I have to say that JOSM in Java was a blessing in this case as it puts Windows/Mac/Linux users on the same level of support. However, I agree it would be nice to have a good native (cross-platform) editor for OSM.
Sebastian Spaeth
Other than that, I have to say that JOSM in Java was a blessing in this case as it puts Windows/Mac/Linux users on the same level of support. However, I agree it would be nice to have a good native (cross-platform) editor for OSM.
Sebastian Spaeth
For the first comment (-Xmx1024m switch), yes, I know it, but seriously, if an app runs »out of memory« when loading a few megabytes of images, something is really wrong.
The second comment though, is imho completely bogus and only reflects the marketing lies by sun. There's absolutely no problem to write crossplattform applications in any common language (e. g. with QT/GTK+), the only »advantage« of java is that it allows »one executable for all«, but what kind of advantage is that? Is it of any use? And more important, is it worth the performance drawback this implicates?
Beside, a common java problem, on an up-to-date linux/xorg (with xcb) you can't run the latest sun-jdk, you need to switch to 1.7_beta.
The second comment though, is imho completely bogus and only reflects the marketing lies by sun. There's absolutely no problem to write crossplattform applications in any common language (e. g. with QT/GTK+), the only »advantage« of java is that it allows »one executable for all«, but what kind of advantage is that? Is it of any use? And more important, is it worth the performance drawback this implicates?
Beside, a common java problem, on an up-to-date linux/xorg (with xcb) you can't run the latest sun-jdk, you need to switch to 1.7_beta.
I agree that loading a few MB of data shouldn't be a problem.
As for the second point: have you ever tried to run GTK apps natively on Mac? I am a GNOME user at home, but I prefer QT apps at work as they work much better natively.
With Java at least, you don't get into the my GTK is better than your QT (and vice versa) as everybody just has to put up with it :-)
As for the second point: have you ever tried to run GTK apps natively on Mac? I am a GNOME user at home, but I prefer QT apps at work as they work much better natively.
With Java at least, you don't get into the my GTK is better than your QT (and vice versa) as everybody just has to put up with it :-)
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Hanno Böck
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You may also find my newsletter about climate change and decarbonization technologies interesting.
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Hanno on Mastodon
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