[Therion] Good practices for xvi files?

Bruce Mutton bruce at tomo.co.nz
Thu Sep 17 12:47:37 CEST 2026


Jean-FlorentBriefly, Therion works best when you give it small independent chunks of data (xvi, one days survey, small scraps, one days th2). These should never be amalgamated with the next days survey, but are instead connected up using surveys made of sub-surveys and maps made of sub-maps.Each xvi and the should only be created once and never amended with the next days survey. Else the effects you describe come into play. Putting everything in one big file is probably the worst possible approach. Good approaches are described in a number of places on the wiki.  I just don't have good access at the moment to provide specific links. BruceSent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------From: Jean-Florent Raymond <jeanflorent at no-log.org> Date: 17/09/26  18:49  (GMT+12:00) To: Therion List <therion at speleo.sk> Subject: [Therion] Good practices for xvi files? Hi all,I have some problems with xvi files so I wonder if I do things the right way.Like many of you I guess, I use to draw incrementally. That is, I have a therion project that compiles to a map of a cave we are currently exploring and when we discover new stuff, we survey it and I add it to the map with the following steps:1. Add the new data in a new th file to the project folder.2. Compile to update the xvi file.3. Open the drawing with xtherion and draw the part of the cave corresponding to the new data.4. Compile to get a pdf.(in particular in this example there is a unique xvi file and a unique th2 file for the whole cave)The problem is in step 3 when I open the drawing with xtherion. Sometimes the updated xvi is shifted compared to the existing drawing, possibly because it does not have the same dimensions as previously. This is annoying but can be fixed by manually positioning it. However if I close a loop then the xvi centerline is distorted (to distribute along the loop the unavoidable error) so in xtherion the previously draw map does not correspond at all to that centerline.Problems:- I have to position the xvi manually (this cannot be avoided I suppose)- Only the new parts of the cave can be drawn on the xvi, because the old ones do not correspond anymore. In particular I cannot easily rework previously drawn parts of the cave.I tried to think of different solutions:a) Generate a different xvi file for each time I add data, so that I can always open in xtherion an xvi file that matches the part of the drawing I am interested in.b) Accept that the xvi file will only match the latest part of the drawing and each time I add data, fix it position with respect to the station where the new data starts.c) Use a version control software like git, so that I can easily find in the history a version of the xvi file matching the part of the drawing I want to work on. (I would like to avoid this option because when teaching therion to beginners there is already a lot to tell and I do not want to add git on top of that.)What about you, how do you deal with that?Best,Jean-Florent._______________________________________________Therion mailing listTherion at speleo.skhttps://mailman.speleo.sk/listinfo/therion
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