February 2010 - Therion

background sketch makes map output extent huge
by dangle＠tomo.co.nz 12 Feb '10

12 Feb '10

I have an image of a scanned cave plan that I have attached to a scrap as a 'background sketch' and am exporting to a pdf. I have a point for the entrance and a have used a made up survey line to produce a rudimentary therion model on which to hang the scanned image and produce a loch model to view with a 3d surface. All list, 2d map and 3d model outputs that I have tried (I have not tested all possible variants) are created perfectly, except that for 2d pdf map outputs when the sketch is activated with 'sketches on', the extent of the area mapped extends about 1km too far left and too far upwards. The extents should be 1km x 0.4km, so something is more than doubling the extent. The image is cropped tightly to the cave and there are no spurious survey stations causing this. I am using 'rotate 70'. Have not had this effect before, and the only thing unusual from my point of view is that the image has a transparent background so that the aerial photograph can be seen overlaid on the cave. I can not see anything wrong with the th2 file (as follows) ##XTHERION## xth_me_area_adjust -28.0 -294.0 6134.0 2316.0 ##XTHERION## xth_me_area_zoom_to 25 ##XTHERION## xth_me_image_insert {100.0 1 1.0} {2188.0 {}} sketches/SUMMITTO_Clear2.png 0 {} scrap summitPlan-s1 -projection plan -author 2010.01.30 "B Mutton" -copyright 2010 "NZSS" -scale [0 0 1600 0 0.0 0.0 40.64 0.0 m] -sketch sketches/SUMMITTO_Clear2.png 100.0 -166.0 point 712.0 28.0 station -name 19@S point 4604.0 1328.0 station -name 4@S point 5440.0 1884.0 station -name 1@S endscrap Any ideas as to why a background sketch should make therion think the extent of the cave is so much bigger? -A problem with my image file? -A problem with one of my therion data files (I think I have ruled those out, but I may have missed something)? -A bug? Bruce

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Tex-Map parameter concatenation
by dangle＠tomo.co.nz 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

I'd like to concatenate additional strings to the beginning and end of tex variables such as \cavedepth \cavelength and perhaps most importantly \comment My fumbling first steps have been able to implement examples from the wiki, but now I'd like to branch out just a little, and I haven't found what I need on the web yet. In the example below, the \cavedepth line works fine. It enables the user to override the value calculated by Therion. The \cavelength line however does not do what I would like, ie prepend the value calculated by Therion onto some custom text. It is as though by redefining \cavelength it's previous value becomes an empty string. I need to know if this is possible, and if so the correct syntax. code tex-map \cavedepth{245\thinspace{}m from historic survey} \cavelength{\cavelength{} \& {m\thinspace{}m from historic survey} } Thanks Bruce

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Therion bugs
by Dave Clucas 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

I've had a couple of problems 1. I put an altitude point at the entrance to a cave. According to thbook this can be optionally followed by units but no units show on the output pdf. I tried the following options but none of them worked -value [fix 1562 meter] -value [fix 1562 metre] -value [fix 1562 m] 2. scrap author thbook says that if the author's name has more than 2 words separate them with '/'. I got an error saying invalid name format. I discovered by trial and error that I can use "name1 name2/name3" but not name1/name2/name3. The real problem though is that I want to use four words and this just doesn't work. Dave Clucas email:dave@daveclucas.com Website: http://daveclucas.com http://mycaves.org Skype: daveclucas

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therion.log: What does "Survey has 2 connected components" mean?
by Torstein Finnesand 09 Feb '10

09 Feb '10

Below is a part of the therion.log file. It says "Survey has 2 connected components." What is this? It also says that there are 87 loops. But when I count them in therion.log, there are 86 (which should be correct, I think: 3007-2922+1). If I rearrange (sort) the centerline data, and compile again, - the sentence is gone. It says that there are 86 loops (a part of that therion.log is shown below s well). Not important issue, - just wondering ... Torstein Finnesand Norway ------------------------ 1> Survex 1.1.12 2> Copyright ¸ 1990-2007 Olly Betts 3> Survey has no fixed points. Therefore I've fixed 1 at (0,0,0) 4> 5> Survey contains 2922 survey stations, joined by 3007 legs. 6> There are 87 loops. 7> Survey has 2 connected components. 8> Total length of survey legs = 21916.41m (21921.70m adjusted) 9> Total plan length of survey legs = 19741.99m 10> Total vertical length of survey legs = 8090.64m 11> Vertical range = 492.90m (from 142 at 329.28m to 2049 at -163.63m) 12> North-South range = 1012.65m (from 142 at 801.56m to 1730 at -211.09m) 13> East-West range = 1084.57m (from 1269 at 700.47m to 2552 at -384.10m) 14> 412 1-nodes. 15> 2007 2-nodes. 16> 436 3-nodes. 17> 56 4-nodes. 18> 10 5-nodes. 19> 1 6-node. 20> ------------------------------------ 1> Survex 1.1.12 2> Copyright ¸ 1990-2007 Olly Betts 3> Survey has no fixed points. Therefore I've fixed 1 at (0,0,0) 4> 5> Survey contains 2922 survey stations, joined by 3007 legs. 6> There are 86 loops. 7> Total length of survey legs = 21916.41m (21921.71m adjusted) 8> Total plan length of survey legs = 19741.99m 9> Total vertical length of survey legs = 8090.64m 10> Vertical range = 492.90m (from 728 at 120.11m to 961 at -372.79m) 11> North-South range = 1012.64m (from 728 at 367.41m to 599 at -645.23m) 12> East-West range = 1084.57m (from 1114 at 760.12m to 1121 at -324.45m) 13> 412 1-nodes. 14> 2007 2-nodes. 15> 436 3-nodes. 16> 56 4-nodes. 17> 10 5-nodes. 18> 1 6-node. 19>

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FW: Hiding small objects at large scales
by Bruce 08 Feb '10

08 Feb '10

> we should make a dedicated wiki page for scale dependant hiding of > objects, including a summary of this email thread. What do you think? Yes, scale dependant sizing and hiding. To my slight shame I have scattered around the place a few unfinished or misleading wiki pages that need attention. When my layouts and metapost have settled down I am open to writing a few words and posting some examples. In the meantime some topic ideas... -Therions built in features -symbol-show, symbol-hide -u: v: w: -scale dependant font sizes as setup in the initialise metapost definition -Base-scale for photo enlargement or for symbol scaling but not both -Using layouts to manage scale dependant sizing and hiding -Hiding point text entities -Hiding line entities (rocks, pitches, labels) -Hiding area fill entities Bruce

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Hiding small objects at large scales
by Bruce 08 Feb '10

08 Feb '10

I have just noticed Thomas Holders metapost sample for hiding small rocks at large scale reductions. http://therion.speleo.sk/wiki/doku.php?id=metapost def l_rockborder (expr p) = if abs(llcorner p - urcorner p) > u: l_rockborder_UIS(p); fi; enddef; I'm guessing the same approach could be used to hide any type of line or area object dependant on the scale, and it looks as though it might be trivially easy to implement, even for someone like me who knows next to nothing about meta post. What would be the chances of this working in the form presented above for point objects? Or for labels as below? def p_label (expr txt,pos,rot,mode) = if abs(llcorner p - urcorner p) > u: p_label_UIS(txt,pos,rot,mode); fi; enddef; Or modified to show or hide point objects depending on the value of the -scale property? Has anyone tried something like this? Bruce

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metapost line definitions 'u'
by Bruce 07 Feb '10

07 Feb '10

This should be a simple one, at least for Stacho and Martin B. The metapost initialise definition seems to define the value u:, which turns up in lots of other places. if BaseScale <= 1: % 1:100 u:=14bp; v:=14bp; w:=12bp; fonts_setup(8,10,12,16,24); elseif BaseScale <= 2: % 1:200 u:=12bp; v:=12bp; w:=12bp; fonts_setup(7,8,10,14,20); elseif BaseScale <= 5: % 1:500 u:=10bp; v:=10bp; w:=12bp; fonts_setup(6,7,8,10,14); else: u:=7bp; v:=14bp; w:=10bp; fonts_setup(5,6,7,8,10); fi; It seems to be a standard measure against which lots of drawn entities are measured. In the above I think 1bp = 1/72" = 0.35mm approx. Is u: (and v: w: for that matter) intended to correspond to a particular drawn entity size in the finished pdf, or are they just arbitrary variables for which one can calculate the value of, using the code in the initialise definition? Cheers Bruce

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FW: Scalebar meatpost labelling errors
by Bruce 07 Feb '10

07 Feb '10

Hi Thomas > that's strange, it should work at any scale. What is error cp-02 ? Cp-02 from therion, actually the metapost complains about the tmpx in the loop that calculates the position of the intermediate text labels. It is some sort of numeric overflow. As from the wiki it only runs for me if scale = 1:1000. If I constrain the loop to cycle only twice it runs for scale =1:500, 1:1000, 1:2000, 1:5000, but crashes similarly for 1:10000. If I play around with the values that are plotted it seems that there is quite a bit of rounding error - maybe we are putting the wrong type of number into the variables, or the intermediate calculation exceeds the variable range. I agree though, on the face of it the maths looks like it should work at any scale. In a few days I could cut and paste examples of what is produced, to illustrate, if necessary (I'm supposed to be drawing cave maps). Here is the code annotated a little, you can see how I have curtailed the loop somewhat to get it to work most of the time ... Bruce layout LayoutScalebar1 # Scalebar by Thomas Holder code metapost def s_scalebar (expr l, units, txt) = % l = value of scale-bar length % units = ?? % txt = string representing units begingroup interim warningcheck:=0; tmpl:=l / Scale * cm * units / 2; % tmpl = half plotted length of scale bar from central top insertion point tmpx:=l / Scale * cm * units / 5; tmph:=5bp; % bar height endgroup; pickup PenC; draw (-tmpl,0)--(tmpl,0)--(tmpl,-tmph)--(-tmpl,-tmph)--cycle; p:=(0,0)--(tmpx,0)--(tmpx,-tmph)--(0,-tmph)--cycle; for i:=-2.5 step 2 until 2: fill p shifted (i * tmpx,0); endfor; begingroup interim labeloffset:=3.5bp; for i:=0 step (l/5) until 0.3*l: % (l-1): % 0.9*l: alternative exit criteria tmpx:=(tmpl * i * 2 / l) - tmpl; % problem is here typically on third run thru this loop, unless scale = 1:1000 % tmpx:=(tmpl * i * 2 / l) - tmpl; % added () to original line label.top(thTEX(decimal (i)),(tmpx,0)); endfor; label.top(thTEX(decimal (l) & "\thinspace" & txt),(tmpl,0)); label.bot(thTEX( "Original Scale 1 : " & decimal (Scale*100)),(0,-tmph)); endgroup; enddef; endcode endlayout LayoutScalebar1

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wiki metapost for station name size
by Thomas Holder 06 Feb '10

06 Feb '10

Hi, the proposed code in the wiki for "To make the debug station names smaller (Stacho Mudrak)" does not work. When looking at thpoint.cxx the "switch (this->type)" statement is followed by a "switch (this->scale)" statement which always clears out what was defined by \thstationname, \thlabel and \thremark. Thomas

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FW: Hiding small objects at large scales
by Bruce 06 Feb '10

06 Feb '10

Thomas >the label size is not passed to metapost but is controlled with tex >macros like \thlargesize. On re-reading I think I misinterpreted Martin Budaj's comment (You can test even for user-defined attributes.) I was puzzled because there seemed to be no size or scale variable passed. I thought maybe it was a global. Thanks for the label code suggestion. I may well try it out because it is an improvement on my current solution. Is one point the smallest that can be passed to the likes of \def\thsmallsize{\size[1]} ? If we could pass 0.001 then the code is no more elegant, but multiline text would be caught. The solution I have been using for a year or so is code metapost fonts_setup(0.01,0.01,9,12,16); % xs s m l xl fonts in points and this works perfectly, in that the xs text is invisible. Trouble is in a file with lots of labels the pdf file size is a lot larger than it needs to be, and text searches in the pdf bring up text that is not visible. The obvious solution is to allow the use of zero values in fonts_setup(). As written at present it crashes, and I'm still too bumbly to be able to modify it. Thanks Bruce

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