This page is work in progress. Starting point was https://josm.openstreetmap.de/ticket/10246#comment:14

Defaultpresets Guidelines

Some rough guidelines for the defaultpresets

New Tags and Values

Basically we have to make sure that the preset menu isn't too cluttered, because it would get hard to find the useful every-day stuff if we had too many exotic entries. New tags and values should have:

• a proper documentation in the ​OSM-wiki
• decent usage numbers (absolute and by number of mappers)
• Controversial cases (like contact:phone=* vs. phone=*) need to be decided case by case
• If a features is only mapped by a handful of specialists, it is better suited for an external preset. Usually this includes tagging schemes restriced to one specific country, hobby, sport or profession.

Note:

• When investigating ​taginfo, also check where unusual values are used.
  • You can use overpass API to load these object in JOSM and check in the history who created them.

• When modifying the defaultpresets also the main mappaint style should be changed for consistency.

New Icons

• The preferred file format is svg (for lossless scaling). If this is not possible then png.
• Check if the svg file correctly works with JOSM. There are some svg libraries which do not work with JOSM (the images get deformed). If you have such a file try the following workaround: create a new svg document with Inkscape, copy the svg data to this new file, resize the page to the data and save.
• svg icons are automatically cleaned up to reduce file size in the JOSM build. So there is no need to do this step manually before uploading svg files to svn. See comment:35:ticket:10479
• The icon should identifiable at a size of 16 pixels. This is the size the icons are displayed in the Map View.
• The license needs to be compatible with GPL3 (like PD or CC0)
• If the tag applies to nodes, the icon in the MapView and the icon of the preset should be the same.
• Icons with transparent background must not be only black or only white. Otherwise if one uses a black or white background (no aerial imagery as background) in the Map View black or white icons would be invisible. Workaround: if you want to use a black icon add a square white background to the icon instead of a transparent background. This doesn't look pretty but is better than an invisible icon. Example: