Entering Street Numbers requires an easier way...

Street numbers are not present but quite important. The current procedure to enter them (as far as I understood) is really long and inefficient. Imagine someone would decide to enter a set of numbers along a street, for all crossroads, for instance: he would have to enter 20 numbers…

The most convenient way would be, according to me, to :

  • select a Way (street)
  • click on a button to enable “number specification”
  • many times: click near the Way (left or right of it, in fact): a dot very close to the Way would be created (but not ON the way) and a pop-up would ask for the number to assign
  • click on the same button to disable “number specification”

Hi,
I push this subject up, because I really think it’s something that should be done quickly.
If you consider a Way is a set of segments (each segment has a direction, along the Way), then one can define a “left_side_first_number=128” and so on, on the segment.
Ideally, a quick pop-up to enter the information with as few clicks as possible would be great.
As far as I know, there are some streets with odd numbers on one side, and even on the other side. In other streets, number increase on one side from 1 to xx and then increase on the way backwards from xx+1 to 2xx.

Storing the data could be done through :




and one would consider that the number 138 is in the middle of the segment joining nodes, on the left side.

Brings up the constant problem with changing the direction of a way, and the resulting trouble with left and right. IMHO nodes for each number are probably better, but then again I don’t enter this data, when I did it was too boring.

Indeed, entering numbers is boring.
Changing direction of a way means changing the left against right.
I had another idea, which is lighter.
We could have:


<street_number number=‘128’ position=‘25%’ side=‘right’ />
<street_number number=‘129’ position=‘33%’ side=‘left’ />

which would mean that the number 128 is on the way from one Node to the other, on the right, at the first quarter of distance, and that 129 is …

To enter numbers: click on a specific icon when the Way is selected to enter “street number mode”, and then click left or right of the way. The point to define would be the projection of the clicked point on the nearest segment ; the side would be obvious ; and a pop-up would appear to require the street number. With this procedure, we could enter one street number per second, without creating too many Nodes. One way requires basically 4 points per segment (0% left, 0% right, 100% left and 100% right).
Does this make sense?

I think you have to separate the GUI issue and the data structure issue. I would in total disregard of OSM practise tell you to make an UI first. So use the fastest way to prototype UI, draw something on paper,

  1. do a brainstorm of concepts.
  2. Then flesh them out, draw step by step what happens when you use them
  3. try to implement them or sell the idea to someone who can implement them.

Important to remember it’s not all that important to beable to change other tags and topography when you enter numbers, so try to concentrate on one thing…

(this is the long way of saying, I can’t really visualize what you are saying)