The latest JOSM now supports multiple data layers again. This was requested since about the day after I removed the feature over a year ago 
.
As another big data source hits the main database (AND’s netherland-parts-of-china-and-india map) the feature got more urgent. I think it is especally cool for people who want to compare two unrelated datasets .
Every file open and every download opens the data into a new, seperate layer now. You can merge these layers using the merge button in the layer dialog. By selecting an layer in the layer dialog, you can switch the current editing dataset as needed.
Now for the bad news:
As the feature is a ground shaking one for the whole JOSM data holding structure, I expect many new bugs introduced 
. If you run into problems that block you from mapping, please revert to the latest release from last week.
For Plugin writers:
Plugins, that used Main.ds could be affected as well. Main.ds now holds the dataset of the current editing layer rather than all the data together. If you are a plugin writer and your plugin is broken and you cannot fix it to work with josm-latest *and* the josm-1.5 release, please link a version which is working with the latest release at http://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Plugins/LatestRelease.
Hi,
after almost 9 months of more or less JOSM-coding, I finally announce a new JOSM release. In shortage of a better name and in spirit of the good old Sam & Max adventure game (which I finished yesterday.. Hurray!), I hereby call this release: “Hit The Road”. 
Before I get to the new features, I want to Frederick Ramm, Christof Dallermassl, Francisco R. Santos, Bruce Cowan, Thomas Walraet, Martijn van Oosterhout and all the other guys I forgot who send in patches, bug reports and ideas and who wrote plugins for the community. 
Ok, now to the facts:
download: http://josm.openstreetmap.de/download/josm.jar
mirrors: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/JOSM#Requirements.2C_download_.26_installation
online-help: F1 (or http://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Help)
bugs: http://josm.openstreetmap.de/newticket
Some new features since the last release
- 0.4 complaint. I bet you already noticed that in the latest beta
- Tons of new modes and tools as split / combine ways, reorder nodes in
a line, reorder segments in a way, (un)select all…
- Better support for plugins. There are over a dozen plugins
already available. A basic plugin downloader has been integrated into
JOSM to ease the plugin installation process. See
http://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Plugins for more
- The MarkerLayer displaying annotations from gpx tracks.
- More visualization options, e.g. drawing the segment ordering number
or drawing boundary rectangles of all downloaded areas.
- HCI improvements as one-time warnings, customization support for the
toolbar on top (including annotation presets), detach the dialogs
on the right, welcome screen, cuter images…
- And of course: fixed tons of bugs.
I hope you enjoy the new release and good mapping.
Ciao, Imi.
Rodrigo Moya has provided some links for a pre-packaged JOSM-version for various Linux distributions, including
The root directory is located here
I am sorry for the failure of the JOSM homepage for the last two days. I had a hardware failure located at my ISP. Everything is back to normal.
Imi.
Hi,
Practically nobody knowed it, but JOSM had a possibility built in to be launched as an applet. This was implemented many month ago. Now I finally got myseld into fixing the last problems (including a bit of server hacking) and made a demonstration setup.
You can either use the standard login or create your own at http://www.openstreetmap.de. Note, that this is currently a test server and so your entered data, including your account, is thrown away after some time (unless we decide otherwise). On the good news, feel free to browse around, it will not disturb the main server in any way (hopefully).
I also setup a Testserver API of the upcoming Version 0.4 (the Ruby on Rails thingie Steve is coding on). It runs in development mode, so a) data may be resetted frequently and b) it is not a clever target for doing benchmarks.
JOSM-Applet: http://www.openstreetmap.de/josm
Testserver: http://www.openstreetmap.de:3000/api
Testserver API (0.4): http://www.openstreetmap.de:3000/api
Try it out! It won’t bite you.
Ciao, Imi.
Hi all,
to fall into line with Steve, I wish you all a good new year 2007.
Although nobody found me at the CCC this year (what a bummer.. but I didn’t prepared any cookies anyway , I still did some coding on JOSM and also made a very small tutorial to demonstrate some of them. Not enough for a new version, but postponed is not abandoned!
The tutorial is flash this time, so you can watch it online too (anyone knows a flash player for firefox/linux/AMD64?)
Get the tutorial at http://josm.eigenheimstrasse.de/download/tutorials/preferences_toolbar_reorder.html
GOOD NEW YEAR!
Imi.
A new release of JOSM is available today, called the “Birthday Release”. The Version number is 1.4, the subversion revision is 166. The main idea of this release is to give plugin writer a more stable environment to build on (please, mark your plugins in some way, if they work with this release).
What changed?
Many new stuff has been included since the century release. Improvements are mostly in the amount of features and the performance.
These are the main new features:
- A Plugin system has been integrated to sandbox fragile and unstable code and to help other people writing addons.
- Translations to german, french, romanian and british-english are provided by community members. They are available as plugins.
- Some highly requested, special operations as “reverse segment”, “download incomplete ways”, “align nodes in a circle” and “select all segments in a straight” have been included.
- GUI addons like a scaler or the annotation preset feature (to quickly select typical properties)
- A Wiki-Help system hopefully improve usability for beginners (once the community start to help me filling it up )
Some performance gains since last release:
- JOSM does not depend on the memory hungry JDOM Parser anymore but features MinML2, a very fast and tiny SAX-Parser.
- Cleanups in the coordinate storing system result in ~20% less memory consumption.
- Some time consuming processes have been put into a seperate thread.
Where to get it?
Ciao, Imi.
I started a call for the most wanted feature or the biggest bug in JOSM on the homepage at http://josm.eigenheimstrasse.de/wiki/MostWantedFeature.
Please contribute and obey the rules (only one vote per people in the list at any time . Or else I will have to spend my time to write a blinking and glittering voting system instead of woring on JOSM .
Thanks for your support, Imi.
The tracker for JOSM bugs in http://trac.openstreetmap.org has moved and merged into the one at ..
In the past, two trackers existed and both are now merged to reduce the number of places to look for new bugs . Unfortunatly I cannot close the existing bugs at trac.openstreetmap.org – there is a (temporary?) problem with the server and I am not able to login.
So for future bug reporting, use josm.eigenheimstrasse.de
Ciao, Imi.
The news page of the offline editor JOSM has moved to OpenGeoData. From now on, you will be informed about upcoming major updates and features on this news blog. Forget all old news pages JOSM had so far.
More information about JOSM is located here.
Ciao, Imi.