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style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Juan and others<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>So I think we generally agree that an improved interface would be nice to have. <o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>And our experience to date is that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon.<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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color:black'>However, the windows presented at F1</span></font><font size=1
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color:navy'> (text editor)</span></font><font size=1 color=black face=Tahoma><span
style='font-size:7.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:black'> and F3</span></font><font
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color:navy'> (compiler)</span></font><font size=1 color=black face=Tahoma><span
style='font-size:7.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:black'> require the new user <o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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color:black'>1: to learn / understand writing a language - the commands and parameters - from scratch. <o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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color:black'>2: to learn / understand in which screen each command / parameters and definitions and extra code should go.<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:7.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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color:black'>The new user is expecting to get hands-on with drawing up within a few minutes, not having to copy/paste and write code before getting any sensible output.<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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color:black'>The GUI for the F3 screen could, for example, present the user with drop-down boxes for setting up all the required outputs and customising layout etc etc.<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>I have never expected or achieved this (as a new user) with any cave centerline application let alone a drawing application, so Therion is not alone in this, but I would agree it requires more determination than most. Obtaining outputs with your own data in a few minutes is however a reasonable expectation to aspire to. We could do better with sample datasets, the existing ones demonstrate a variety of features but they are not documented usefully, so most people will miss the significance or reasons for what is being demonstrated. It would be rash of me to offer to document them, but perhaps one distant day…<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:7.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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color:black'>There are currently more than 3600 entrances (including many digs) and more than 325km of passage. Most surveys are now drawn up in Corel Draw, some in Inkscape, and Footleg is </span></font><font
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style='font-size:7.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:black'>producing a 54km cave network survey in Tunnel.]<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:7.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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color:black'>Anything to encourage cavers to produce a final output, ie a friendly front end to Therion, would be superb.</span></font><font
color=black><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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</span></font><font color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-family:Arial;
color:navy'>I see your problem now I think, as I have perhaps a similar (but much smaller) headache with a ~30km (so far) project with a few dozen caves and entrances covering 60km<sup>2</sup>. My issue with Therion is more of a documentation and organizational guidance problem. In the absence of a super-interface it seems that good guidance and templates for organizing data would be the next best thing, and could even inform the design brief for a future interface.<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>I see the current Therion as experimental and perhaps half way towards having a well developed and complete feature set, so again, a super-interface is competing for developers time against developing and fixing some core functionality that is especially needed for larger projects. </span></font><font
color=navy><span style='color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>While there is a lot of good information in the wiki, much of it is not “what you need to know, when and where you need it.” I have started putting some of my ideas in the wiki, but they are a long way off being useful or complete as far as organization goes. And I still do not have good feel for how to manage multiple output options for multiple caves in a modest system, let alone anything over say 20km. I know a lot of you people are dealing with much larger systems and so probably have a better grasp on it than I, even if you are not exclusively using Therion. Still, perhaps I will get around to making an effort adding some more thoughts and samples on organization to the wiki, in the hope that someone will point out where I am making it too complicated for myself.<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Bruce<o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre
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style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre></div>
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