[Therion] th_formdef.tex runaway text error

Mon Apr 20 03:06:17 CEST 2026

I tried iccaving/migovec-survey-data: Cave survey data for the Migovec
System in Slovenia <https://github.com/iccaving/migovec-survey-data>  to see
if the three overview thconfigs might display this behaviour.

The longest compilations are about 45 km, and trialling of various colour
map-fg combinations and scales as below did not trigger any cases of this
error.

Back to looking at my own dataset I suppose.

Bruce

From: Therion <therion-bounces at speleo.sk> On Behalf Of bruce at tomo.co.nz
Sent: Sunday, 19 April 2026 17:20
To: 'List for Therion users' <therion at speleo.sk>
Subject: [Therion] th_formdef.tex runaway text error

I'm exploring what might be causing this problem that I raised 3 weeks ago
(copied below).

It has been affecting a project where we are migrating a lot of centrelines
from On-Station to Therion.

Back in March this problem only affected exported pdf elevations that were
over about 30 km in length.

Now we are closer to 63 km, it is also affecting exported pdf plans.

If I drill down to subsets of the project, there is no particular atomic
subset that errors out.

Seems like when the subset drops below around 30 km the problem resolves
itself and everything works OK.

Paring the layout used for exports down to specify only the scale of the
output and then gradually adding statements, I have narrowed the culprit
down to the colour map-fg statement.

Specifically, colour map-fg [97 86 38] is what seems to trigger the error.

Similarly colour map-fg scrap and colour map-fg map.

However colour map-fg 50 does not exhibit the problem for the 30-ish km
centrelines.  An example below.

Neither does colour map-fg altitude (a colour legend is placed in the
header, but the LRUD is not coloured - don't know if that is expected or
not).

This breaks down somewhat at 60-ish km and all pdf exports fail even with
only a scale specified.

I have not figured out if this affects all my large projects, as I got
interrupted by the map -survey option problem reported earlier.

Stepping back in time, based on limited testing, all versions back to at
least therion 6.2.1 (2024-03-20) behave similarly).

Bruce

From: Therion <therion-bounces at speleo.sk <mailto:therion-bounces at speleo.sk>
> On Behalf Of bruce at tomo.co.nz <mailto:bruce at tomo.co.nz> 
Sent: Monday, 30 March 2026 15:51
To: 'List for Therion users' <therion at speleo.sk <mailto:therion at speleo.sk> >
Subject: [Therion] th_formdef.tex runaway text error

Hello

I've just created an error, due I believe to particular layout changes I've
made to a couple of exported elevations, but I'm yet to isolate which
changes are the culprits.

(It's not related to recent posts I've made on therion/therion: therion
<https://github.com/therion/therion> - cave surveying software, and it is
consistent across all recent Therion versions)

Perhaps someone may know if I can use the therion log information to track
down the cause?

Using the below information I checked in file thTMPDIR /th_formdef.tex

.and found the string \PL{9178.94 283.21 m}% on line 165540.

There are 220130 lines overall, and the file seems to end without obvious
truncation.

That in itself does not help much.

I'm sure I'll be able to isolate the cause by other means, but I'm just
wondering if anyone knows if I could use this information to locate a cause?

Bruce

#################### end of metapost log file ####################

converting scraps ... done

making map ... done

######################## pdftex log file #########################

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.22 (TeX Live 2021/W32TeX)
(preloaded format=pdfetex 2023.12.2)  30 MAR 2026 14:09

entering extended mode

**data.tex

(./data.tex (./th_enc.tex) (./th_texts.tex) (./th_resources.tex

(c:/Program Files/Therion/texmf/tex/glyphtounicode.tex))
(./th_fontdef.tex{c:/P

rogram Files/Therion/texmf/fonts/pdftex.map})

(./th_formdef.tex

Runaway text?

9178.9

! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [main memory size=3500000].

l.165540 \PL{9178.94

                     283.21 m}%

If you really absolutely need more capacity,

you can ask a wizard to enlarge me.

Here is how much of TeX's memory you used:

263 strings out of 95671

3772 string characters out of 1192323

3500001 words of memory out of 3500000

1667 multiletter control sequences out of 15000+50000

16503 words of font info for 54 fonts, out of 1000000 for 2000

844 hyphenation exceptions out of 5000

5i,1n,6p,289b,36s stack positions out of 5000i,500n,10000p,200000b,50000s

!  ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!

##################### end of pdftex log file #####################

C:\Program Files\Therion\therion.exe: error -- pdftex exit code -- 1

writing xtherion file ... done

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