JOSM(1)

💖 JOSM 💖

okay bestie, so the manual name is JOSM — she's a General Commands Manual page, and she's serving main-character energy for the Java OpenStreetMap Editor. Let's get into it 🫶

---

✨ NAME ✨

josm — Java OpenStreetMap Editor. that's it, that's the name, iconic 👑

---

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

josm

yeah literally just run her. no flags required, she's low-maintenance like that 💅

---

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So JOSM is an editor for OpenStreetMap, written in Java 8. ngl, that's the whole vibe.

OpenStreetMap is a project that is so aimed at creating and providing free geographic data — think street maps — to anyone who wants them. anyone. no gatekeeping, no cap. It lets you view, edit, and use geographical data in a collaborative way from literally anywhere on earth 🌍✨

The project got started because — and this is the tea — most maps you think of as "free" actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways. so rude honestly 😭

---

🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

• -h, -?, --help — shows help. the classic. when in doubt, ask for help, bestie 🫶
• --geometry=<width>x<height>(+|-)x(+|-)y — your standard X geometry argument 📐
• [--download=]minlat,minlon,maxlat,maxlon — downloads the bounding box 📦
• [--download=]<url> — downloads the location at the url, with lat=x&lon=y&zoom=z 🌐
• [--download=]<filename> — opens the file. any file type that can be opened with File/Open 📂
• --downloadgps=minlat,minlon,maxlat,maxlon — downloads the bounding box as raw gps 🛰️
• --selection=<searchstring> — selects with the given search 🔍
• --[no-]maximize — do [not] launch in maximized mode. maximize or don't, we support your choices 🖥️
• --reset-preferences — resets the preferences to the default. factory reset era 💀
• --load-preferences=<url-to-xml> — changes preferences according to the XML file 📝
• --set=<key>=<value> — sets preference key to value 🎯
• --language=<language> — sets the language 🌈
• --version — displays the JOSM version 🏷️
• --status-report — shows a status report with useful information that can be attached to bugs 🐛✨
• --debug — prints debugging messages to console 🖨️
• --offline=<OSM_API|JOSM_WEBSITE|CACHE_UPDATES|CERTIFICATES|ALL> — disables access to the given resource(s), separated by comma 🚫

---

📁 FILES 📁

JOSM files are saved according to the XDG Base Directory Specification:

• $HOME/.config/JOSM — Preferences ⚙️
• $HOME/.local/share/JOSM — User data 🗂️
• $HOME/.cache/JOSM — Cache 🧺

lowkey important: if the directory $HOME/.josm exists, all files are stored there. she picks that one instead. periodt 💅

---

☕ JAVA PROPERTIES ☕

The following options can be set by using Java system properties — that's -Dkey=value passed to java, or specified inside JAVA_OPTS.

• josm.pref=<path> — sets the JOSM preferences directory 📍
• josm.userdata=<path> — sets the JOSM user data directory 📍
• josm.cache=<path> — sets the JOSM cache directory 📍
• josm.home=<homedir> — relocates all 3 directories to homedir. the cache directory will be in <homedir>/cache 🏠
• josm.dir.name=<JOSM> — changes the JOSM directory name 🏷️

---

🌿 ENVIRONMENT 🌿

• JAVA_HOME — specify an alternate Java environment ☕
• JAVA_OPTS — specify Java options. for example, to use a HTTP proxy server with this program, set this environment variable to something like JAVA_OPTS="-Dhttp.proxyHost=yourProxyURL" before starting josm 🌐

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

JOSM was originally designed and coded by Immanuel Scholz, and is now maintained by the OpenStreetMap community. community-maintained, we love to see it 🫶

The current JOSM maintainer is Dirk Stöcker. a lot of administration work is done by Paul Hartmann and Vincent Privat.

Major code contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Stefan Breunig, David Earl, Gabriel Ebner, Dave Hansen, Paul Hartmann, Karl Guggisberg, Matthias Julius, Alexei Kasatkin, Jiri Klement, Ulf Lamping, Simon Legner, Raphael Mack, Upliner Mikhalych, Vincent Privat, Frederik Ramm, Dirk Stöcker 🌟

Many minor contributions and patches by others; see SVN history at https://josm.openstreetmap.de/svn/ for details. use "josm-dev AT openstreetmap.org" to contact still active authors 📬

The logo has been designed by Ilya Palikov 🎨

This manual page was initially written by Andreas Putzo <andreas@putzo.net>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).

---

okay that's the whole page bestie, you're officially JOSM-pilled 🦋 this was the JOSM(1) manual, sourced from March 22, 2021 — go forth and map the whole entire planet, no cap 💖✨🗺️