Author: openstreetmap[at]rational.co.za
[Added to the original trac issue at 8.45pm, Friday, 19th September 2008]

When users shift click roads with different names, Potlatch will happily assume it's one way with multiple names and separate the names with semicolons. Roads with multiple names are quite rare, so the default behavior should be to prompt the user, like JOSM does.

I'm changing it to a major defect, because an end user product should not make it easy to make mistakes.

For example, johng has been an OSM member for more than a year and it still happened to him :
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/4948937/history

He did not even knew what happened :
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-za/2008-September/000279.html

Author: Richard
[Added to the original trac issue at 9.29pm, Friday, 19th September 2008]

You can change it to 'critical' for all you like - it won't get it fixed any faster unless you are prepared to contribute a patch. Are you?

Author: openstreetmap[at]rational.co.za
[Added to the original trac issue at 11.10pm, Friday, 19th September 2008]

Well, the simplest will just be to change mergeWay in way.as so that it refuses to merge ways when any of the tags are in conflict.

   OSMWay.prototype.mergeWay=function(topos,otherway,frompos) {
                var i,z;

+z=otherway.attr;
+for (i in z) {

• if (otherway.attr[i].substr(0,6)=='(type ') {}
• else if (this.attr[i].substr(0,6)=='(type ') {}
• else if (this.attr[i]) {
• if (this.attr[i]!=otherway.attr[i] && otherway.attr[i]) { return; }
• }
  +}
  if (this.oldversion>0 || otherway.oldversion>0) { return; }

So

• I have reported it on trac and not to osm-talk, as you requested earlier.
• I've presented a patch

• I haven't tested it.
• I haven't documented it.
• I haven't added a friendly error message. But there isn't one for trying to merge ways that are not sharing an end point either.
• I haven't checked it in.

4 reasons why this bug will stay open I guess.

Author: Richard
[Added to the original trac issue at 6.34am, Saturday, 20th September 2008]

No, that's utterly great and you have very pleasantly surprised me. :)

Testing and checking in is no problem; documentation to the level of the rest of Potlatch would be about two comments, so that's fine. Friendly error message - well, yes, I'd like one; but tbh actually having someone make the effort, for once, to contribute a patch makes me so much more likely to want to "complete the job", if you see what I mean. So the bug won't stay open - not for long anyway.

Cheers.

Author: Richard
[Added to the original trac issue at 11.36am, Saturday, 20th September 2008]

Fixed in 0.10c (well, the second version thereof) with friendly error message.