iD - is it possible to access the help text outside the editor?

Within iD, the second symbol down at the left-hand side (I've no idea what it's supposed to be) gets to a series of help screens. Although the links within the help text (such as to "http://www.openstreetmap.org/") can be followed e.g. by "open in new tab", this doesn't work with any of the help page links.

This makes it very clumsy to navigate through the text - you have to keep scrolling up and down each little help page and you can't read it all at a glance. If the background button has previously been pressed you can't see any help text at all.

ideditor help

asked 27 Jun '13, 20:47

SomeoneElse ♦
36.9k●71●370●866
accept rate: 16%

edited 27 Jun '13, 22:11

aseerel4c26 ♦
32.6k●18●248●554

For info, I also asked over at Github:

https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/1971

They're "happy to accept pull requests" but it's not a priority.

(26 Nov '13, 21:24) SomeoneElse ♦

One Answer:

active answers oldest answers newest answers popular answers

The help text is at https://github.com/systemed/iD/blob/master/dist/locales/en.json (search page for «"help": {» (without French quote marks) or other languages).
Scrolling horizontally currently only works with cursor keys for me. Therefore, you may want to switch (a button on top of the page) the github page to raw-mode text which is easier to scroll in.
However, that all is far less readable compared to the in-editor view (no interpreted markdown syntax). You can paste the code there in dingus, select "preview" mode and hit "convert".

~~The view in the translation platform (select on the left panel) is more comfortable to read - but still not interpreted (seems to be markdown syntax).~~ (that now requires a log-in)

permanent link

answered 27 Jun '13, 22:37

aseerel4c26 ♦
32.6k●18●248●554
accept rate: 18%

edited 28 Oct '13, 13:47

That's the one (the bit that starts "This is an editor for" in that JSON file). It's not tremendously readable in that format, though...

(27 Jun '13, 23:21) SomeoneElse ♦

Unfortately the "translation platform" seems to want some kind of login, so isn't actually usable.

(28 Oct '13, 12:48) SomeoneElse ♦

@SomeoneElse: Indeed, that was not requiring a login to view, when I looked at it.

(28 Oct '13, 13:27) aseerel4c26 ♦

For info, I raised this issue, but it sounds like it's not going to happen any time soon. However, HOT's "learnosm" guide does now have an "iD" section (thanks @harry-wood!). That doesn't cover everything, but it's a more focused introduction than the in-line help, for example.

(11 Dec '13, 14:24) SomeoneElse ♦

Follow this question

By Email:

Once you sign in you will be able to subscribe for any updates here

By RSS:

Answers

Answers and Comments

Markdown Basics

*italic* or _italic_
**bold** or __bold__
link:[text](http://url.com/ "title")
image?![alt text](/path/img.jpg "title")
numbered list: 1. Foo 2. Bar
to add a line break simply add two spaces to where you would like the new line to be.
basic HTML tags are also supported

learn more about Markdown

Question tags:

ideditor ×301
help ×100

question asked: 27 Jun '13, 20:47

question was seen: 4,392 times

last updated: 11 Dec '13, 14:24

iD - is it possible to access the help text outside the editor?

Follow this question

Related questions