Reporter: ShakespeareFan00
[Submitted to the original trac issue database at 10.26pm, Monday, 7th April 2008]

A competitor site to OSM, Wikimapia provides a limited geotools option.

It is suggested, that a modfied potlatch be provided in OSM, to provide simmilar functionality.

The features suggested shall be -

• approximate distance between two selected notes by a straight line, either from
  pre existing OSM nodes, or by direct reference to a background layer.

• approximate distance with reference to a background layer,by direct user selection
  (user constructs a way in the geotools window over a background layer such as NPE or Yahoo).
  ** The distance display should ideally be a list of points selected, the individual distances between points, and a running total of the length of the way.

• approximate, land survey of an area, by definition of an area though triangles,by user selection.
  ** The display should idealy be a list of points. the triangles constructed and the
  areas developed thus..

• It shall be possible to extract the area or way so constructed in a compatible 'free' format.

• Mantinence of any area/way selected over zoom or movement.

• Browse only mode for OSM data to allow viewing of additional tagging information...

The closest example I can think of in terms of a pre-existing system are:

• MAGIC (propriatery) , and under a restrictive license, Shows OS data with overlays
  for sepcfic data sets. Limited area and line distance survey tools..

• Wikimapia - which whilst supporting enhanced tag browsing, and some of the geo tools aspects has an unclear license.