On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Andrew Atkinson <andrew@wotcc.org.uk> wrote:
1 My problem was that if I'm using colour on a page, I often use a tinted background and/or run bits of survey across a photo corner or something (or even over a graphic) as part of my layout. But if there is transparency in the fill, I can't do that. What's needed is for no transparency to be used in 'normal' fills = all passages, but instead a solid colour. For overlying bits, transparency is fine for the upper section, but not the lower.
Transparency for all 'non cave' bits = the background *should* be transparent of course.
think that point 1 in your mail to the therion group might mislead some - this factor of transparency must be one that is under the control of the person creating the file (the choice of using transparency or a solid colour) and not a restriction of the package. I suspect it is something that is easy to do to create an effect and, reasonably, it is therefore done ...
It is possible to turn transparency feature completely off using 'transparency off' in layout. If the transparency is on, there is a nontrasparent white fill below all passages to eliminate combining effects with coloured background (if I remember correctly, the white fill is omitted if 'color map-bg' is white in current therion).
2 Another oddity - there seemed to be a lot of non-stroked detail/bits way off the passages/survey that don't show up but are selectable. Doesn't seem to affect anything and I can't even see them, but only spot that *something* is there when trying to select the image. Odd - not a problem (as far as I know) but as this is a report on what happens here, I thought I'd mention it.
This is a feature, lot of objects are clipped by passage walls. They are not displayed, although present in the file.
3a (svg with walls and lables only, no passage fill colour)
I can change the line weight okay, but as I hit as a problem before when working on files like this, the paths don't seem to stay as a path (text, for example, aren't words but just
Text along a path should be the only exception -- it is broken to letters in MetaPost so that Therion has more control about placement of letters.
single letters) and I can't figure out how to do a fill to add colour to the passage content. That is, if there is a colour there, I'm pretty sure I can change it but I can't select enough to actually add a fill in the first place.
It can be really tricky to find a proper object.
3b (svg with only cross section switched off) The detailed view won't open correctly in Illustrator - there are warnings about too many nested groups (surprising considering the complexity of the .svg files for the Three Counties that are in the next issue, which breezed through) and that it might not look correct, then it opens with most of the content missing (the only bit that appears fully intact is at the extreme bottom and only for a few metres). Needed for this I think/suspect: some work in flattening/decreasing grouping in the original before creating the .svg, but I don't have experience of the creating package (nor any other vector software).
You could decrease the number of groups by turning 'layers' and 'transparency' off in layout. Maps are really complex and you cannot avoid groups completely. Hope this helps, Martin