[Therion] Feedback on 0.3.8 - queries

[Stacho Mudrak]

First of all, I am impressed with your map! It's a great feeling for me 
to know, that someone else is using therion for such a huge cave.

There was no traffic in the mailing list, so I was worried, that all the 
people that tried therion are disappointed with it. So I left therion 
developement and started to work on the new 3D viewer for therion. And 
there was a lot of problems to solve - especially with unicode OpenGL 
support and off-screen poster rendering. So there was no time for 
therion developement.

Wookey wrote:
> 1) Is there a dripline symbol for the entrance extent? Do I use 'overhang'?
> I tried using overhang and nothing appears (because it is outside the clipped
> area?) Should I use overhang and add a -outline out option?
> 
> 2) How can I represent a surface cliff line between a series of caves? 
> 
> I have a lot of cave entrances with a defined cliffline between them. the
> survey makes a lot more sense if this surface feature can be seen. How can I
> draw a line on to represent this?

We have been already thinking of some surface specific symbols.
According to your mail - you would like to have two new line types:

line drip (or dripline)
line cliff (or cliffline)

Could you plase write us, what syntax makes more sense? We should
probably make difference also between underground and surface contours.
Probably also

line surface-contour

is needed. All those lines will have clipping turned off by default.

Another point - using "-outline out" for surface features is probably
not correct. It will make huge problems when generating clipping paths
and 3D model. Use instead "-clip off" option, if you do not want that
line to be clipped.

Another possibility is to add all surface features into specific scrap,
where no outline will be defined (=> no lines will be clipped).

> 3)What to do when entrance line draws scrap end across to the wrong point
> (e.g. deception entrance?) In the bottom LH corner of the survey above is
> 'Deception Cave'. If you look at '1st entrance' you will see the problem I
> mean. Therion has decided to ignore the last bit of wall and just draw a
> line across the gap between the nearest points. How do I make a wide, flared
> entrance like this have the 'correct' entrance area? This may be related to
> question 1.

Very simple but quite often problem. Just connect the entrance ends with

line wall -subtype invisible

I know that invisible wall is not very intuitive, but it is very easy to
use - because you do not need to stop entering line - you just type
subtype spec to line point options.

If you do not like it - you can use

line border -subtype invisible -outline out

instead. But we are using invisible walls.

> 4) How is length in legend calculated when data is imported from .3d file?
> The survey above consists of a lot of scraps round real data and a lot round
> 'fake' data made from surveys which are nothing but drawings scaled with the
> scale bar or a few nearby or fake survey stations. The survex .3d file used
> includes survex data for the whole mountain including another 50km of cave
> or so. So where is the number in the legend coming from?

It should be the total length of all centerline objects, to which scraps
in the map refers to (surface shots should be excluded). Uff, I am not
sure whether you understand this explanation.

In the case of import - centerline object is created for each survey
object and shots are splitted into surveys. So in your case it is the
sum of lengths of all surveys, you refers to in maps. Or at least it
should be.

If the number does not make sense - you can redefine it in layout. Use

code tex-map
\cavelength={1234 m}
endcode

or something like this. I am not sure.

In the TODO list I already have something like setting survey in layout,
from which length and depth will be taken. Example:

statistics source-survey somesurvey.topsurvey

Would it make sense for you?


> 5) How do I get rid of the 'dummy' survey surrounding all my data which
> means the title of the whole thing is 'dummy'. I may have been told this
> before in which case I apologise for forgetting the answer.

Import should work without this dummy survey (outside of survey
context). Have you tried? If not, there is some bug.

> 6) When is a label under passage and when over?
> As you can see I have some of both in this survey. Is it to do with the
> ordering of walls and labels within the scrap? Or maybe there is an 'ontop'
> option?

There is no 'ontop' option. Label is on the top of the scrap - in which
it is defined. If some other map overlays it - the label will be under
this passage. Would you like to have something like 'ontop' option?

S.