[Therion] easyer to handle?

[Stacho Mudrak]

Quoting Stefan Oswald <stefan_oswald at gmx.at>:
> We draw on therion in our caving club, but we have a few problems, which i
> want to report to you, we also have made a little "brainstorming"...

Thanks for your feedback. You are asking very difficult questions, but I will
try to answer...

> It is always very difficult to introduce new people, no software engineers,
> into therion, also i had great problems.

You are right, but... 

>From time to time we get a crazy idea - that we will start programming much
more simple therion again from the scratch. But when we start 
to analyze again all functionality that is definitely needed,
we are not able to find data model, that is much more simple
than current state.

> The map editor user interface gives
> many options, but thereby it is not really easy to handle, the same with the
> layout. It is difficult to produce a good looking plan-layout with text and
> so on.

Well, I am afraid you will never get really good looking map with all bells and
whistles from therion. Our goal was to have a system, where we can have
complete, up to date and very flexible documentation of the cave. For this, we
are now paying price of good looking cave map. But if you have several tens of
km cave with multiple levels and passages that connects to each other - even
schematic map in therion is a pain, not a precisely drawn map with all the
details... At least in our situation, when we do not have a lot of free
time...

> A generall icon-interface, such as most leading CAD programmes use would be
> much more efficient in our opinion. Is this planed in final version?

The main problem of therion user interface is, that it is not standard vector
drawing interface. Here I 100% agree. But I am afraid - I have no resources to
start working on another CADlike interface. 

> In Therion you draw something and you do not know what it will exactly  
> look like. For handling the Programm it would be easyer if you could  
> immediately see the result without pressing F9, opening the .pdf, take a look
> at the result, close it again (Windows) and return to therion.
> just an idea. 

On Windows it is a problem of acrobat reader - I usually use ghostscript, when
I
need check how it looks frequently. I have tried several times to control
Acrobat Reader from xtherion - but without success. I do not know, what is
going wrong - but from version to version, Adobe Acrobat Reader has different
behaviour when controled from other program.

I would like to add some features to xtherion in this case (e.g. showing some
symbols instead of simple dots). But it is only in TODO.

> Also showing other scraps (.th2 files) in map editor, as with CAD for Cavers
> (Autocad) would be an option.

Yes, it would be great. But I am afraid - with the current state of the code in
xtherion, this is not possible...

> To abstract we mean placing focus on usability would make it easyer for many
> people using therion, not only in our club.

This would be great, but it implies very deep changes in the system design and
currently I have no resources to do that. 

When I started therion - I was single and student. Now I am married, I am
working and I have three little children. I am really happy if I find time to
fix bugs, add little features or go to the cave :)

Best regards, S.