Id: Support right-click-drag to change map rotation

Created on 30 Mar 2018  路  4Comments  路  Source: openstreetmap/iD

In some cases it would be helpful to be able to rotate the map away from North-Up.

To support this we'd need to change the following:

new-feature usability

Most helpful comment

Could you please give examples?

The two most common examples people have asked me about are:

  • Tracing stuff along a diagonal road grid (many users instinctively bend their neck to match the road grid, which can be uncomfortable, and looks silly when a whole room of people is doing it)
  • Using street level imagery where the user wants the map aligned to driver point of view (for example, to better understand what the "no left turn" sign means without having to spin the world around in their head).

All 4 comments

@bhousel wrote:

In some cases it would be helpful to be able to rotate the map away from North-Up.

Could you please give examples?

Could you please give examples?

The two most common examples people have asked me about are:

  • Tracing stuff along a diagonal road grid (many users instinctively bend their neck to match the road grid, which can be uncomfortable, and looks silly when a whole room of people is doing it)
  • Using street level imagery where the user wants the map aligned to driver point of view (for example, to better understand what the "no left turn" sign means without having to spin the world around in their head).

Personally, I would find map rotation to be very handy for the two reasons above (and not just because I like to trace east-facing corn mazes).

Some considerations regarding user interaction:

  • JOSM binds right-dragging (or Ctrl-dragging on the Mac) to panning the map. I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 necessarily the job of iD to avoid conflicts with any JOSM gesture, but this is such a basic gesture that it should be super easy to unrotate the map if the user accidentally rotates it. On the Mac, the most natural key bindings would be 鈱モ啇 and 鈱モ啋 for rotation and 鈱樷啈 for unrotation.
  • Mac users often Ctrl-drag instead of right-dragging because it鈥檚 awkward to two-finger drag on a touchpad or on a touch-enabled, one-button mouse. For awhile, it was impossible to rotate a GL JS鈥損owered map in Firefox on the Mac, because the context menu kept getting in the way: mapbox/mapbox-gl-js#3131.
  • Both these kinds of input devices support the two-finger rotation gesture, which would be ideal for this feature. See GestureEvent for Safari and MSGestureEvent for Internet Explorer and Edge.
  • Should iD remember the rotation setting? If so, the compass would need to be more prominent to avoid surprises. Maybe the minimap itself should automatically appear when the map is rotated and serve as a compass of some sort.
  • How should the imagery offset controls work? Should the map automatically unrotate the moment you fiddle with them?

hi , this is a great feat for map rotation, is there any timeline for the support of rotate func in iD? i want to make contributions for this feat.

There isn't a timeline - someone wanted this so I put my thoughts on a ticket about what might be needed..

It would be great to have your help with this! 馃憤
It might make it easier to break the work into several PRs.

Was this page helpful?
0 / 5 - 0 ratings

Related issues

1ec5 picture 1ec5  路  3Comments

rivermont picture rivermont  路  3Comments

thibaultmol picture thibaultmol  路  3Comments

jidanni picture jidanni  路  3Comments

Chaz6 picture Chaz6  路  3Comments