Norton deletes the .exe (or moves it to quarantine) because it has no certifcate and flags it as dangerous. So you must learn Norton to keep it’s hands off from the Potlatch .exe. By the way, the Windows 10 built-in Windows Security alerts on the lack of a certificate (the program is unsigned), but gives you the choice to ignore the warning and continue the installation.
As far as I have understood the difference between both vesions for Windows is optimized rendering (translation of map data to visible pixels on the screen) for display controllers embedded in the CPU (i.e. Intel Graphics) or an external more advanced display controller like nVidia or alike.
My laptop has both types of display controllers and I tried both versions. There is no difference visible on the screen, but my feel is that the CPU-version behaves more smoothly while panning the onscreen map (zoomed in far enough for detailed editing) with the mouse.
How to force Potlatch3 to start a new changeset?
After editing for a first session on osm.org, P3 creates a new changeset. However after shifting the map on osm.org to a new unrelated location for a next edit-job, and having pressed the “Edit” button in P3 again, it appears that P3 does not close the first changeset and no new one is created. So the result is that unrelated edits are collected in the same changeset, which should not happen. Question: is there a way from within P3 to close the current changeset and start a new one? Or should the browser take care of that after pressing the “Edit” button on osm.org? Now only the map data of the selected area are downloaded to make them available to P3.
What I have found the only way to force P3 to start with a fresh changeset is closing (using the upper right red button “X”) the program and restart it and repeat this for each new edit session for which you want a separate changeset.
It’s good practice to press ‘c’ before closing the current version of Potlatch 3, because otherwise OSM keeps the changeset open for a while before closing automatically.
I’d like to propose that Potlatch 3 sends a Close-command before being closed itself.
Richard, please check the information that is sent for tagging a changeset.
I am a long-time Linux user (mostly Debian or Debian-based distros). I have not been able to install Air nor able to get Potlatch3 to work with Wine. Using Wine, I have tried multiple times on different Linux distros and managed to open the program but it crashes as soon as I try to do something - there are repeated errors related to inability to debug but I have not been able to resolve them. I have resorted to creating a virtual Windows machine using VirtualBox and it requires purchase of a Windows licence but that is the only way I have been able to use Potlatch3. I have tried to research the situation a little and it appears that Adobe have washed their hands of both Flash and Air and the Harman company has taken over Air but with no intention of making Air-based programs accessible to Linux. I am disappointed that I cannot get Potlatch3 to work under Linux and I would be very happy if someone else has been successful and could show me how. But I am appreciative that I can continue to use Potlatch even if only by installing a virtual Windows machine.
The Mac version is now fully signed and will run as an application without any warnings.
The Windows version is now available as an installer as well as a “bundle”. The installer currently pops up an installation warning but I have a certificate on order to avoid that.
Other changes in the latest version are: the build date is now saved in the changeset tags; you can choose to use it with a non-OSM site (e.g. OpenGeoFiction); a bug relating to dashed line rendering is fixed; the help page is complete, and I’ve updated the index and download pages.
I’m sorry it hasn’t yet been possible to find a reliable way of running on Linux. I’m hopeful that someone will find a magic incantation to install the old AIR 2.6 and use the P3 .air file with that, and I’m continuing to build a file which has the old 2.6 descriptor (labelled as “more Linux-friendly” on the downloads) which could potentially run with this.
Today is 31 December 2020, officially the last day for using Adobe Flash. Thank you very much to Richard for making it possible to go on OSMapping with Potlatch in the next year!
Happy New Year!
Is there a plan/roadmap for integrating P3 into the OSM website as P2 uses/used to be? It really would be nice to start P3 automatically in the right place when clicking on a GPX-track.
After having done a few edits with a test-account in OSM I wanted to log out again. But Potlatch3 never asks for a new account name and password, even if I clicked [Log out] or even [Reset].
Dear Richard, please put the current user name on the Options - Connection - Page (or somewhere else in the menu) and make Potlatch 3 really forget it after Log out. Thanks a lot!
@Pfad-Finder,
Difference between P2 and P3 is that P2 was running as a browser-integrated Adobe Flash application, while P3 is a standalone application running on the PC. This would imply to start P3 from within the OSM website, or at least warn the user to start P3 manually in case the OSM website cannot detect P3 being loaded already. For this reason I doubt if this scenario will be possible or very practical.
What can be done now is change the text under the rolldown arrow beside the ‘Edit’ button to: Edit with iD (in-browser editor)
REMOVE Edit with Potlatch 2 … Edit with Remote Control (JOSM, Merkaartor or Potlatch 3)
AND
Change the text of the error message “Editing failed - make sure JOSM or Merkaartor is loaded and the remote control option is enabled” to “*Editing failed - make sure JOSM or Merkaartor or Potlatch 3 is loaded and the remote control option is enabled
*”
If you then adapt your preferences on osm.org to edit using Pemote Control you will get a warning to remind you to load Potlatch 3 before you start your editing session. You will learn fast enough to load P3 first if you plan an editing session - easy to do if P3 is pinned to the Windows Taskbar.
Would this be an acceptable scenario? For me at least, it is.
How to reach the maintainers of the osm.org website to ask them to make the adaption?
There’s already discussion on the OSM Website github about this, and one proposed change is not to mention specific editors for ‘remote control’, although a specific text has not yet been agreed.
I always used potlatch2 for editing and had got very much used to it
potlatch2 has now been disabled, though the underlying flash is still available - it is only “unsupported”
the alternative potlatch3 is not available to me as a “true blue” linux user
I think my motivation for contributing will suffer seriously. Also, I feel almost like cheated because rare and much-needed funds from OSM were used to create this potlatch3 that is of no use to me. Had I known this beforehand I’d never have supported the assignment of OSM money.
For what it is worth, my very first edits were with Potlach1 and I disliked it so much that I went looking for alternatives and found JOSM. Many claim that JOSM has a steeper learning curve. Maybe that is true, but it didn’t seem all that hard to learn basic editing with it. And it is written in JAVA so it runs on Linux as well as MacOS and Windows.
Yes, JOSM seems the least unfortunate alternative. I’ll tackle it one day, if I can muster the required amount of motivation. Still, I feel I have been led by the nose by the suggestion that PL3 would be an alternative for PL2 - it isn’t, at least not for me; and yet I was misled into supporting its funding from OSM.
Wiki, wiki, wiki