Those who came from ID Editor are well familiar with the mouse right click pop up menu with varying active buttons depending if and what object is / is-not selected. Sample
The buttons provide a hover description such as here the one for copy.
Opposed, JOSM only has a fixed right-click pop-up to choose imagery
Right click is a rather common functionality in many applications and went to look for any plug-in or ‘extension’ in old speak that would emulate this functionality. At least it took me serious getting used to having made the switch last year and needing to use 2 hands to do common regular things in JOSM that can be done with one hand in ID Editor without loosing grip of the mouse.
Personally I think this is a (big) design omission which would help such common and repetitive activities to think of e.g. Ctrl+Shift+V to add the tags of a previously copied object onto a newly mapped object. That said, have no idea if this was a conscious decision or if there is no equivalent in Java, albeit right click is available on quite a few right hand side activity panels such as on the one for layers
What’d you think, anyone dying to get these wheels added to JOSM and which ones would you like to be part of this where the ID pop up has
Circularize (Shft+O to convert a straight line to a circle or just O to make a ring round)
Move (M) … not so much as in JOSM just grab an object and drag it anywhere)
Square (Q) yes, buildings, parking spaces, high value function
Flip Long (T)
Flip Short (Y) one of these flips I’ve never actually found in JOSM
Rotate (Shft+Ctrl + Mouse drag in JOSM)
Copy (Ctrl+C in JOSM)
Paste (Ctrl+V in JOSM)
Bin (Del in JOSM)
and as JOSM special of course a button for Ctrl+Shft+V to only add the tags of a copied object or Multipolygon relation.
In short looking to just never let go of the mouse and keep the other hand on the coffee mug.
I agree when I started using Josm, I often instinctively right clicked in the hope to find the command I was looking for, meanwhile I’m used to not using it.
The problem is that there are many functions, and many possible “contexts” one can imagine. You mentioned copy paste (and for tags), also switching mode (select, add, delete, extrude, etc.) is a possibility, or geometry modification (split, combine, straighten, make circular/rectangular, unglue, etc.), or selection, or search, or filters etc.
I think it should depend on what is selected / where you click on (background, node, way, relation), and possibly be user customizable and hierarchical (e.g. 2 levels: mode, tags/presets, geometry ops etc. in first level, and the specific command in a second or possibly third level).
In general I agree it can be improved significantly, although the actual key to productivity is learning and using the keyboard shortcuts, once you know them blindly you would hardly start browsing flimsy context menu options for what can be done in fractions of a second with the right keystroke, so right click would be a welcome extension for the casual user
I do agree that the space in the right-click context menu could be put to a much better use than niche imagery-related actions. And Java can do it just fine, so I don’t see any problems with it. Geometry-related operations filtered to only those that work on the current selection would be sensible entries for this menu.
However, …
I suspect that you’ll be fighting an uphill battle against JOSM’s basic UI structure with this goal. JOSM seems to be designed around having your left hand on the keyboard and the right one on the mouse – as should be familiar to many PC gamers with WASD controls, for example. And this goes deeper than just the lack of a right-click context menu. Many JOSM workflows involve a lot of switching between modes, such as add and select mode (as well as maybe a few others such as extrude). That’s easy when using the A and S keys, which are conveniently placed just where your left hand is resting on a QWERTY keyboard, but would be highly annoying if you had to move your mouse to click a button every time.
Mouse mileage would be significantly reduced, (eye) focus steady on where one is on the screen. While contextual would be great, lots of opportunity here, just having the basic set as what’s offered in ID + that paste-tags for the repetitive area mapping such as vineyard, vineyard, vineyard and another would be a huge improvement to me. Yes, I can navigate with mouse to and pick from the menu, slowing down a lot.
Not the exaggerated ‘never let loose of the coffee mug’ (forgot wink emoji), but it would be 95% of how/what I do and can map. Just having the edit menu as a right click ‘in situ’ would already be a significant enhancement
