[Therion] Wishlist - scrap preview, low-res preview

[Stacho Mudrak]

Wookey wrote:
> The interface needs a better way of previewing scrap names so one can join
> up a lot of scraps without having to slowly open each file and click about.
> Being able to see a scrap number somehow without selecting the scrap would
> also be useful. At the moment if editing a .th2 file to put in joins one
> needs to close current scrap and open new one, then click on correct part to
> find out which bit is which. 
> 
> Not sure how best to deal with this problem.

MartinB had a suggestion, that scraps that connect within one file (have 
common end wall points) - should be joined automatically. Especially in 
the case, when you are redrawing already existing maps - it would be 
very usefull and it would save you some time.

> Maybe showing scrap-names in the debug ouput would be sufficient. Or a
> separate low-res output with scraps coloured differently and labelled?
> 
> The 'without pics' option helps somewhat here, but what I really need is
> some kind of low-res scrap overview.
> 
> There is a related problem that the 1.5Mb PDF file now takes at least 2 minutes
> to render on my 900Mhz laptop. Having some kind of low-res ouput would be
> generally useful for checking that joins have worked and caves have appeared
> would be very handy - is that at all practical? I'm not sure where all the
> time goes.

With the new 3D engine - there should be possibility to export also 2D 
maps for 3D viewer. Having only coloured scrap outlines that are 
interactivly zoomable and scrollable and generated very fast (no 
metapost and PDFTeX needed) would be worth of it.

The problem is, that new 3D engine is still only a future - I am not 
sure when it will be ready for preliminary beta release. It does not 
work now.

But if you would like to - I can use survex 3d format also for 2D 
output. You would write:

export map -o map.3d

and there will be centerline and walls shown as lines in this file. I 
can label the wall points with scrap names, so you should be able to 
preview your work easily. What do you think?

I am just missing reload button in aven/xcaverot, but this I should 
write to survex mailing list.

S.