JOSM Styles

The JOSM map display (MapPaint) uses XML style files to convert the user provided tags to a map like display including e.g. colouring, line thickness and icons.

Alternative Styles

By changing the XML style file (or files) you can customize your JOSM's map display as you like. It is even possible to show more features (e.g. 'maxspeed' values) in the editor's map by adding a special style file.

URLs for new style files can be entered by editing this page and then are automatically available in JOSM mappaint preferences (after a few minutes).

short description	author	description	version
British map overlay	Ulf Lamping	Special rules to take differences in the british area into account (e.g. traffic signs).	1.0
Iceland	Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason	Custom JOSM mappaint style for Iceland	0.1
Parking lanes	Sebastian Klemm	Parking lanes along roads and parking/stopping restrictions  More details	1.0_2010-08-15
SeaMap FreieTonne	FreieTonne	Seamap/ Seamarks from Project FreieTonne  More details	2010-09-02_16:50:13
Maxspeed	Rubke, Dirk Stöcker	Show maxspeed settings in JOSM map display	1.1_2009-07-12
Maxspeed MPH	Vclaw	Show maxspeed miles per hour settings	0.1_2010-03-24
OpenSeaMap	OpenSeaMap	Seamarks for OpenSeaMap  More details	2010-08-06_18:41:07

Note: In the settings the internal style can also be reached using " resource://data/elemstyles.xml".

Create your own style

You don't like the standard style? Change it to your own liking:

• Either use one of the above styles or the standard style one as a base for own styles
• Now you can edit the file (the standard style contains a format description)
• When you made new icons, either add a path to these in mappaint.icon.sources or use absolute URL to a webspace containing the icons
• Enter your style in the JOSM mappaint preferences.
• ... restart JOSM and your new style will be used!
• When the style should be available for other users as well, then add it to the above list of this page.

Icon handling

There are 3 different forms to handle icons:

• Icons distributed with JOSM can be entered directly with the path (relative to JOSM's internal image directory).
• New icons can be directly referenced using a http-link. These are downloaded and cached internally.
• Since JOSM version 2289 Zip-Files are supported.
  • The zip file must contain at least one file with extension xml.
  • Icon names and path are relative to the topmost zip directory.
  • If there are multiple XML files, a file with "style" in the name is preferred (to allow packaging styles and presets in one archive).

Style Collection

If you have an interesting style that might be useful for others, but are not compatible with the automatic access mechanism, just add a note here. Preferred is using the automatic usage as described above (list in the source at top of this wiki page).

• The OSM2Go  source archives of version 0.6-4 contains a potlatch like JOSM style and version 0.6-5 contains an additional Mapnik like JOSM style in the data directory. These were written for OSM2Go and have not been tested with JOSM.
• Hiking Map Style: There is a rather different style corresponding to the design of a  German hiking map. Available as  Windows installer or  zip with  Installation hints for Linux.

JOSM styles for newbies (HOWTO)

To make any changes to JOSM's styles, go to the preferences panel (Menu: Edit->Preferences or hit [F12]). Then click the 3rd button on the left ("Settings for map projection and data interpretation") and select the "Map Paint Styles" tab. There you can find three text boxes: "Map Paint Styles", "Defaults" and "Icon paths".

The upper one ("Map Paint Styles") contains the currently selected *special* styles, but it maybe empty if you're just beginning to tweak JOSM's map paint stye :-) The middle one contains all "Default" style sets for special purposes which are available. Let's assume that you're interested in sea maps, then you probably will make use of the style "Sea Map Freie Tonne": Just highlight this line by clicking on it and push the "Copy Defaults" button, the selected line will show up in the upper box and will be active after the next JOSM start. You can add multiple styles as well, if you want. To delete a special style you don't use anymore, just select it in the upper box and hit the "Delete" button.

Well, let's continue with advanced style usage! You created your own style (see below on this page)? Just click "Add" and enter either path and filename or URL of your style file.

Rendering

Mappaint renders the map data so it looks much more like a map (colors, icons, annotations, ...) - compared to the JOSM wireframe mode.

Nodes

Most nodes that corresponds to tags in the  Map Features page will show an appropriate icon, e.g. a "P" on blue ground for amenity=parking.

There are some special icons for missing/incomplete things:

missing icon We don't have the right icon for every node tag in map features yet, e.g. icons for most natural=xy tags are still missing. If you encounter such a "missing icon", feel free to create a nice 16*16 pixel icon that matches the tag and send it to the talk list.

warning icon The corresponding tag was once used but is no longer recommended to be used - or - it is not suitable for a node, e.g. highway=motorway just doesn't make sense on a node. Probably not all deprecated tags will show this icon.

Ways

Most ways that correspond to tags in the map features page will get special color, thickness and line style (e.g. dashed lines for railways).

Areas

Areas are ways that form a sort of ring. Most areas that corresponds to tags in the map features page will be filled with a special color (the filling will be transparent to some degree).

Direction arrows

Direction arrows in this mode are only drawn for selected items, this gives you a a significant speedup while moving the map.

Preferences

In the preferences editor you handle new style files as well as paths to the icons. Note that styles can be either additional or individual. If a style itself has a new internal name, then switching the "standard" default to this name creates a new display. Styles with equal names are additional. If you want to change the name of a style, you need to add the new name in front of the path using a "=" as separation. The same can be used for icon paths.

You also can use the following hidden preferences:

• mappaint.fillalpha
  • alpha "opacity level", that is used to fill areas. An integer value between 0 (transparent) and 255 (solid) with the default of 50.
• mappaint.fillareas (show areas)
  • 10000000 (default) - areas will be filled with their corresponding colour and name will be rendered
  • 0 - areas will be surrounded by lines only and name will not be rendered
  • any other number - areas will be filled with their corresponding colour and name will be rendered at any zoom level below the given number in meters
• mappaint.showicons
  • select whether icons are shown - same values as mappaint.fillareas
• mappaint.shownames
  • select whether names are shown - same values as mappaint.fillareas
• mappaint.strokes
  • select whether strokes or full lines are used - same values as mappaint.fillareas
• mappaint.useRealWidth
  • true - ways will change width corresponding to the real width in meters set in the elemstyle.xml file
  • false (default) - ways will have the same width on every zoom level
• mappaint.zoomLevelDisplay
  • true - elements visibility depends on zoom level
  • false (default) - all elements are displayed
• mappaint.fontsize
  • 8 - size of mappaint texts