[Therion] Passage Names

[Andrew Atkinson]

On 10/01/11 19:41, Bruce wrote:
>>>> Which brings me back to the where this all started, it would be more
>>>> user-friendly to do searches on passage names as people call them.
>>>> IE
>>>> how long is 'Route 66' Currently to do this they would have to know
>>>> that 'Route 66' was made up of the second half of Diesel Duck plus
>>>> Onion and the first half of 'hall of time'. The first and last of
>>>> these is not searchable?
>
> I see your point, but if this degree of user interrogation is required,
> might it not be better to rationalise the survey, centreline or map objects
> in the particular dataset than add a new entity to the Therion data model?
>
> For example one could choose to use the 'colloquial names' as the survey id
> or as part of the map object title, and then in concept they could probably
> be searchable.  Maybe a new surveyor discipline is required; always start
> and stop a survey at the point where the 'name' of a passage changes.  In my
> experience the boundary between particular passage or region names in caves
> is fuzzy and evolves as the cave is explored and tends to be different for
> each group of cavers.  In any case, as passage is being discovered, it
> rarely has a name at the time of survey.
>
> I think it is reasonable to be able to ask; How long is this centreline?
> Survey? Map object? And (apart from centrelines maybe) Therion already
> allows this.  I suspect adding another layer of name object is probably
> unnecessary complication.  It comes back to my hobby horse (I think).  Data
> organisation is the key to getting Therion to be flexible and scalable from
> tiny caves to enormous systems surveyed by every conceivable means etc etc.
>
> I suspect the Route 66 question can be answered by judicious planning of the
> map object structure, and of course this means that every therion cave
> dataset needs to be carefully organised.  I'm not really sure as I still
> have not completely made friends with maps/previews/offsets/atlases, but I
> think if I apply myself to it I can come up with a system that is modular
> and compatible with every type of output.
>
As you say, I tend to have the surveys, including scraps in before the 
names are thought of, never mind set. I agree that data organisation, is 
a surveying programs primary aim, but I strongly disagree that the data 
structure should be tied to the cave names, which it would be if I 
understand your suggestion correctly. Most names change at junctions, 
which is the last place you want to change scraps (I do not think that 
scrap or map names are currently in the database.)
I follow the edict that surveying should be done naturally, ie survey 
what you find, with as little artificial breaks as possible, so breaking 
for  colloquial names (good tag) would not fit this, plus I am not sure 
it is possible. I the moment I do not see the advantage to having a 
survey name and a title, I could live without the second, but I guess it 
is well embedded by now. (Please tell me if I am missing something 
fundamental?)

Although I can see a problem with displaying the colloquial names I feel 
that it could be implemented a little like the tags for surface, 
duplicate etc. This would allow it to have more than one, which often 
happens with names, onion passage is part of Route 66.

I think that this has clarified to me a method, I personally would like 
to see something like
colloquial <name1> [,<name2>....]

inserting a newe tag would just add to the list, to finish something like

endcolloquial <name1>

would be needed.

This has been the main complaint of people new to surveying that I have 
had, and for my sins I have trained quiet a few people, as I think I 
said in a previous email, I know of one group that did re-organised 
hundreds of km of survey so the 3D diagram showed real names.
The tagging system (or something better) may be useful in this, but it 
certainly come into its own on database searches. I hope it can be added 
to future plans.

Andrew