[Therion] Limit in the number of scraps in a (big) project ?

[Martin Budaj]

Hi,

the limits are _much_ higher if you set metapost to use 'double mode' and
tex to use 'macro mode'. No need to worry about the cave size.

See thbook, Appendix, chapter Limitations -- check especially the footnotes.

Martin

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 4:22 PM James Begley <james.begley at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hiya,
>
> Line 218 of the Therion TODO.S file (see
> https://github.com/therion/therion/blob/master/TODO.S) says:
>
> + add support for multiple metapost files (more than 4096 scraps)
>
> So there was a known limit of 4,096 scraps at some point. Note that the
> TODO.S file hasn't been updated for many years, so that limitation might
> have been addressed at some point.
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
> On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 at 14:39, Benedikt Hallinger via Therion <
> therion at speleo.sk> wrote:
>
>> Good questionQ
>> in the hirlatz project, we "just" reach: "[3106]".
>>
>>
>> Am 2025-10-08 15:23, schrieb Xavier Robert via Therion:
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > I am maintaining a quite big structured Therion database with more
>> > than 700 caves
>> > (https://github.com/robertxa/Topographies-Samoens_Folly). I am using
>> > Therion 6.3.3 (2025-01-06), TeX Live 2015 (MetaPost 1.999).
>> > Following a new session of exploration and surveys, I added some
>> > scraps in this database. I have no problem to run any compilation of
>> > separate caves.
>> >
>> > But since my last update, when I try to run a Therion compilation for
>> > the whole database to build the 3D view of the system
>> > (
>> https://groupe-speleo-vulcain.com/wp-content/themes/custom_theme/3d/JB.html
>> ),
>> > I get an error during the « Preloading the plain mem file » :
>> >
>> > [...]
>> > [4090] [4091] [4092] [4093] [4094] [4095]
>> > ! Number is too large (4096).
>> > l.296920 beginfig(4096
>> >                       );
>> > [4096]
>> > ! Number is too large (4097).
>> > l.296923 beginfig(4097
>> >                       );
>> > [4097]
>> > … and so on…
>> >
>> > therion: error -- metapost exit code -- 512
>> >
>> > I a m not sure, but I think that I have a total of 4102 objects (this
>> > is the last number with a similar error ; with a total of 4117 files
>> > written in thTMPDIR/).
>> > If I run Therion with the -d option, I see all the data.xxxx from 1 to
>> > 4102 in thTMPDIR/. The compressed log file is in attachement.
>> >
>> > I tried to recompile my database after commenting a small part of the
>> > database that I did not change recently. The compilation run well.
>> >
>> > So, I suspect that there is a limit in the number of objects (scraps
>> > ?) Therion (or mpost ?) can handle. Am I right ?
>> >
>> > Is there a way to get rid off this limitation ?
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> >
>> > Xavier
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Therion mailing list
>> > Therion at speleo.sk
>> > https://mailman.speleo.sk/listinfo/therion
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