driggs wrote:Therion requires you to first successfully install Survex and
MacTeX, then you must try to compile it from source.
There is more to install: ImageMagic to be able to morf images and VTK (
http://www.kitware.com) to run 3D viewer Loch.
However if you use macport
http://www.macports.org/ it will be not so difficult. And of course the Developer Tools from installation CD of MacOS X.
Compilation is quite simple. Just open terminal change directory to directory of therion and write: " make config-macosx [enter]", wait until finished, write "make [enter]" , wait, and "sudo make install [enter]".
driggs wrote:Good luck; there's a reason that they don't offer a binary download on the website.
The reason is simple, nobody had energy and time to finish it till now. It is free and open project. "Use it as it is or improve it."
Advantages of therion solution:
All the data formats therion uses are plain text formats. So you may open any one of the files and read it or edit it. They are human readable and to understand what the words and numbers mean is not difficult. It has one very big advantage: therion data are not dependent on therion itself. Anybody and anytime in the future may do interpreter of therion's data (in the worst case you may draw maps from that data manually too
). So you may never lost your data of a cave - not only surveying data but data of all the objects you drawn too.
You may generate any kind of map output from therion data - from detailed map with all objects and cross-sections to small map filled by black only to publish it in an article. You may generate atlas or 3D model (stereo mode too) based on passage walls and heights + model of terrain. You may generate several lists (caves, continuations) and database data to make statistics and graphs. All PDFs outputs (there are more formats you may export) are searchable because the search feature of Acrobat Reader. You may generate the specialized maps - for example the map only with water flows and lakes. And all of them from ONE set of data.
Check therion page and
http://therion.speleo.sk/samples.doc for examples.
driggs wrote:Hopefully someone will post with a more optimistic view than I have!
In the moment I saw the DistoX and PocketTopo and the data from PocketTopo was possible to import to therion, I'm very optimistic.