Mōrena (Good Morning)

Yes, two new children on the street!

Mapiah and Therion Studio are looking like viable alternatives to XTherion.

My journey…

Nineteen years learning to love XTherion
Six months occasionally playing with Mapiah
Three weeks dabbling with Therion Studio

I haven’t seriously tried to learn the latter two, just kept banging my head against them to see what it feels like. Both could do with searchable help files.

Where I’ve ended up.

Using my favourite text editor to have all the Therion files I might need ready to edit or launch in an app (a 17 year habit)
Mapiah is my compiler every time – faster and cleaner than XTherion
XTherion is my drawing editor – familiar, object parameters are efficiently typed in
Mapiah is my drawing editor if I want to move, stretch rotate a bunch of objects or background image, then I save and head back to XTherion
Studio is what I look at in awe – but apart from the obvious, have not figured it out yet

Below is a gut feel comparison, based on dabbling only, and without bothering to read all the instructions and learn the capabilities. Using Windows 11…

Characteristic	XTherion	Mapiah	Therion Studio
Development repo	therion/therion: therion – cave surveying software	https://github.com/rsevero/mapiah	https://github.com/ladislavb/therion-studio
Speed	Slow to load and redraw th2 files Long delay before compile on some devices	Very fast th2 rendering and fast compilation. Mapiah’s strength	Slow to load the App, fast th2 rendering and compilation
Version control friendly (does not rewrite th or th2 file structure if was edited by another App)	Mostly compliant if edited with other apps	Yes, minor exceptions	Yes, as far as I’ve tested
Drawing interface	Not consistent with modern capabilities and norms (cannot move or transform whole objects, must be moved point by point).	Modern capabilities (move and transform whole objects and collections of objects). Mapiah’s strength but Bewildering array of line object editing capabilities	An improvement on traditional XTherion capabilities. Yet to explore the capabilities in this respect It might well be Studio’s strength
Freehand line drawing	No	No	Yes
Facilitates everything Therion can do, and supports legacy workflows such as interactive manual survey data entry.	Yes	No, or at least not yet	Unsure, although it expands on XTherion’s functionality in many areas
Can use multiple instances to work on same or multiple projects and multiple applications (eg text editors) simultaneously.	Yes	Yes	Initial experiments suggest multiple instances OK, but only one project at a time
Can be used as a compendium single instance editor (th, th2, compiler).	Yes	Yes, except for general text (th) files	Yes, and seems not to like NOT being used this way. Includes error detection & correction, live access to object parameter help. Studio’s strength
Most objects can be created efficiently with minimum clicks and maximum typing.	Yes, XTherion’s strength	No, very very clicky	Haven’t used enough to know. Not yet figured out how to draw within the bounds of a scrap object, for example
Object visualisation	only as points, lines and (if you hold your tongue right) areas	Better symbolisation	Astounding th2 visualisation. All Therion conceptual objects can be viewed (and edited) as symbolic blocks. Studio’s strength
Live update if another App changes open file on disk	No	No	Yes
Development pace	Steady consistent improvement over 30 years	Recent rapid development until 2 months ago	Recent rapid development

So there it is. Tell me what I’ve missed and where I’m wrong.

I’m pretty excited about both Mapiah and Studio.

Thanks Rodrigo and Ladislav, your efforts are much appreciated.

Bruce Mutton

From: Therion <therion-bounces@speleo.sk> On Behalf Of ladislav@lblazek.cz
Sent: Wednesday, 1 July 2026 21:34
To: Therion List <therion@speleo.sk>
Subject: [Therion] Therion Studio 2026.6.9

Hi all,

New version of Therion Studio (https://github.com/ladislavb/therion-studio) is out, with lot of quality-of-life improvements, bugfixes and performance improvements. See https://github.com/ladislavb/therion-studio/releases/tag/v2026.6.9

I would like to thank all the testers who tested the app, reported issues and suggested improvements. Especially Martin Sluka, Bruce Mutton, Axel Hack and Alex (apgeo) and Therion devs (Stacho, Martin).

I recently noticed that the Mapiah project (https://github.com/rsevero/mapiah) is attempting to address the same issue: creating a modern replacement for Xtherion. Unfortunately, I encountered difficulties in running the project on my Mac or even building it from an Xcode project. Despite these challenges, But I’ve heard good things about Mapiah and it seems to be quite mature. Therefore, my objective is to maintain maximum interoperability between Xtherion, Mapiah, and Therion Studio, enabling seamless transitions between these tools. I’m genuinely curious to know the differences between Mapiah and Therion Studio. Has anyone use both?