[Therion] Therion Digest, Vol 117, Issue 8

[Graham Mullan]

In Therion Digest 117.8, Juan Corrin said:

> It seems daft to me that enthusiastic surveyors are not using the software
because of its complicated front end.
> 

If someone finds data entry into Therion complicated, then they must have
had serious problems making notes in a paper note book. I am not a computing
expert, by any means; some of the Tex coding that Andrew puts into out
thconfig files makes me go wibble. However, Martin is quite correct. A GUI
front end will not help. Anyone who has used Larry Fish's Compass will
understand that a GUI can make some things harder to understand - how do
LRUDs fit in to the leg that they are recorded against, for example - and
are very constraining. When Therion was first written, we didn't take large
quantities of splay readings with a DistoX. Now this is done routinely.
Getting Therion (and, indeed Survex with a similar data entry process)
tweaked to deal with this was relatively straightforward, I believe.
Rejigging a GUI would have been something of a nightmare. Further,
applications like Andrew's Topparser make getting the recorded data into the
computer, into Therion, pretty straightforward indeed.

That deals with the .th file. Dealing with the .th2 files is somewhat more
difficult, but recent improvements, like the context menu when you click on
a line or a point, have improved the working of this enormously. It is
difficult to see how one can change this interface much to make it simpler
to understand. If you get your background file in properly - I routinely
generate xvi files almost as often as I import them from PocketTopo - then
you are dealing with points, lines and areas. Just three things. It's not
that hard, surely, and Footleg's current tutorial is pretty bloody good at
showing how things are done.

Dealing with higher level .th files and with thconfig files is a lot harder,
I agree. However, I do not see, again, how constraining what we have into a
GUI will do anything other than remove the flexibility that we currently
enjoy.

One of the great joys, as far as I am concerned, of Therion is that it will,
once you get all your ducks in a row, generate the finished product pdf at
the press of a button. OK, maybe sometimes two or three buttons, if you are
combining several views into one pdf. In our latest effort, five different
views are combined along with properly placed x-sections and a title blurb
which includes generated data on surveyors & cave length/depth. It is not
perfect, as I haven't yet managed to colour match all the maps properly
between the plan & the 3 elevations, but it's getting there. If you can get
another programmer to match all that in an idiot-friendly GUI program then
I'll be impressed. But I won't hold me breath!

Rant over

Graham
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