Hi there,
I am new to openstreetmap and JOSM and try to manipulate a map such that I can take out all the street names in a selected area. I have been trying to figure that out all morning but am only able to remove tags for selected streets. Is there a way to save some time and view/ edit all streetnames/ tags at once?
thx
mephil
JOSM can edit only the data that has been downloaded and currently selected. After downloading the complete area of interest, you can use the selection dialog several times to combine the selections to highlight exactly what needs to be changed.
Since you mentioned removing all street names, keep in mind that you are modifying the master OpenStreetMap database, and other people may have spent many hours collecting street names, and other map users will expect street names to be present.
If you need a map display without street names, consider modifying a map renderer so that it doesn’t put any street name labels.
I may have misunderstood, so feel free to clarify and we’ll try to help.
If you just want to remove names for streets/roads, you could use the Search feature in JOSM. ie search for highway= type:way* then that will select all of the streets/roads/paths. You can then remove the name tag for all of them at once.
Though as Mike says, you should not remove the names in the main OSM database. So don’t upload your changes from JOSM. But you could save to an .osm file on your computer, then use that file with some rendering software to make a map.
thx to both of you for the reply!
sorry for being a bit unclear. I made sure I wasn’t uploading anything during and after my experiments 
however, I felt that it could happen easily when closing JOSM as an unexperienced user since the standard setting when closing the tool puts a checkmark to a box which says something about “uploading changes”.
what I actually want is to display a map without street names. so I guess I would download a .osm map and than use a
software like Mapnik, right?
mephil
Can you recommend a software which is easy to use/ set-up for my purpose?
mephil
If you are using Windows, the easiest rendering software is probably Maperitive. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Maperitive
Mapnik is more powerful, but can be complicated to install and setup.
To get an overview about all possibilities and programs, have a look at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Rendering or http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_on_Paper
awesome! exactly what I was looking for.
thx@all!
mephil