[Therion] More show and hide - LAYERS

[Bruce Mutton]

Perhaps this is time to air my observation that, although the pdf files are
layered, the layering adopted does not appear to be as useful as it could
be.  This may be however, due to my limited resources (experience, mental
capacity and software) when it comes to manipulating pdf files.

The Map pdf's I create tend to have three layers, 
- one named after the title of the map that contains all the cave centreline
and drawing,
- one named surface, that contains all the cave sketches and surface images,
and
- an unnamed background layer that contains the grid, map-images and the
header/legend.

The Atlas I think are not layered.

I have not branched much into chapters or multiple maps in the same output,
but they may have some manifestation in the layering that I have not yet
noticed.

Unless there is a fundamental reason why it can not be done, I would have
thought that extensive subdivision and hierarchy of layers would be
advantageous.  If this were implemented then I imagine that the person
viewing the pdf could choose layers so that they could view say, surface
only, or cave only, or cave with no text, or cave with no text and no
speleothems and no area fills, or centrelines only, or centrelines and
station names etc. One output - multiple presentations. (Large file size I
guess) Just a thought for the future direction...

Any way, current frustration.
I'd like to be able to see my cave drawing and scanned cave images overlaid
on top of my surface image, but currently this is not possible from Therion.
Multiple runs and some post processing is required.  I would tend to put the
sketches on their own layer, separate to the surface and separate to the
drawings (scraps)

Not particularly urgent, but I would see this as important in the medium
term - one plus years (??) say.  I have a project in mind that will require
at least the separation of surface and images.
Bruce

-----Original Message-----
From: therion-bounces at speleo.sk [mailto:therion-bounces at speleo.sk] On Behalf
Of Stacho Mudrak
Sent: Wednesday, 15 October 2008 2:12 a.m.
To: List for Therion users
Subject: Re: [Therion] More show and hide

> Have just figured out that the following statement will hide morphed
> sketches of caves.
>
>    symbol-hide group surface-centreline  # hides morphed sketches as
well??
>
> Is this by design, or is it a side effect of something else I may be
doing?
>
> I'm using version 5.2
>
> Perhaps it is because it is drawn on the same layer as the surface image?

Well, currently the background sketches are drawn as surface images -
so surface top|bottom|off should affect it, but I am not sure if
hide/show surface-centerline will. I need to check this. It is planned
to be placed into same PDF layer as scraps are, but it will take some
time, until it will be implemented. Do you have some problem with it?

Regards, S.
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