Cavechat.org

It took a bunch of hand editing of the SEF file, but I finally had a successful move of Walls data (only about 25,000 ft of cave) into Auriga. I was doing this for "situational awareness". The Palm (a Tungsten E2) takes up a lot less room in a pack than paper with the same information.

The plot was nice - it would be nice if when if station labels are turned on (thank you Luc for being able to chose the suffix so the FSB number doesn't show if not desired)the size would scale or perhaps be set to display every 3rd or 5th station to reduce the clutter.

My big problem was moving between displays. I figured out (I think) that a Session was a Survey book, but when I went to display the shots, I got a box with a check mark in the first column. If I held the stylus on the box it would tell me the station. But when I was in the map and went to the table mode, I had the station labels in the first column.

Also when displaying sessions, some were missing the name (FSB number), but I could never figure out how to edit that or why somehow they were missing. I didn't see any difference in the SEF format. But that could be Compass messing things up.

Luc - your video on the Auriga site showing the new features is nice (your implementation of splay shots looks great). Perhaps you could do something like Brandon K did with the Adobe Illustrator Tutorials (videos) and do some Aurgia tutorials? Or perhaps Brandon (doesn't he use Aurgia?) could be talked into making some - he did a great job with the Illustrator tutorials. I'm probably not the only one who needs "Auriga for Dummies". Auriga is complex and the Palm interface is unfamiliar - so I doubt I'm the only one with problems.

LWB

Lynn,

It took a bunch of hand editing of the SEF file,

What's a SEF file? Standard Exchange Format?

The plot was nice - it would be nice if when if station labels are turned on (thank you Luc for being able to chose the suffix so the FSB number doesn't show if not desired)the size would scale or perhaps be set to display every 3rd or 5th station to reduce the clutter.

Note that can select a small font for station names. And additional fonts (FontBucket) can be downloaded from the Auriga website.

My big problem was moving between displays. I figured out (I think) that a Session was a Survey book, but when I went to display the shots, I got a box with a check mark in the first column. If I held the stylus on the box it would tell me the station. But when I was in the map and went to the table mode, I had the station labels in the first column.

Checking the user manual you should be able to identify the window you landed in. And learn about navigation. Note that there's also contextual help in every window. You reach it with the i icon (when available - in modal dialogs) or with the Options/Help menu (elsewhere.)

Also when displaying sessions, some were missing the name (FSB number), but I could never figure out how to edit that or why somehow they were missing. I didn't see any difference in the SEF format. But that could be Compass messing things up.

The session name is editable in the Session form, and can be left blank.

Luc - your video on the Auriga site showing the new features is nice (your implementation of splay shots looks great). Perhaps you could do something like Brandon K did with the Adobe Illustrator Tutorials (videos) and do some Aurgia tutorials? Or perhaps Brandon (doesn't he use Aurgia?) could be talked into making some - he did a great job with the Illustrator tutorials. I'm probably not the only one who needs "Auriga for Dummies". Auriga is complex and the Palm interface is unfamiliar - so I doubt I'm the only one with problems.

Brandon already made excellent video tutorials for Auriga (available in his website, there's a pointer to them in Auriga's website). They date back some years ago but are still very relevant despite some interface changes.

Regards,

SEF may hsve been "SMAPS Exchange Format" at one time, I think now it is Standard Exchange Format. It is extremely flexible. It can be fixed-field, allowing numbers to run together with no apparent separator. It can use various chatacters as separators: space, comma, tab, etc. Only one separator is used between any pair of data fields, but not all the separators on a line need be the same. The documentation is in one of the SMAPS manuals. The cavers who have implemented SEF say it is ambiguous because there are some things that can be specified in more than one way

Displaying every nth station name is a poor way to avoid overlapping labels. My first method of avoiding overlapping labels generated the box that represented the area used by a label. As the program went through the list of station names it would test the new label against all the ones that were previously allowed to be displayed. Now I simply establish a grid of cells over the display space. I calculate which cell the new label would start in. If the cell is occupied, the new station name does not get displayed. If the new name will be displayed, some of the adjacent cells may also be marked as occupied. The cells can be made larger than the labels to give a more open appearance. I find it best to go through the list of station names in reverse order so that stations at the ends of surveys get priority.

Bob Thrun wrote:Displaying every nth station name is a poor way to avoid overlapping labels.

This approach works fine in Compass.

Jeff Bartlett wrote:

Bob Thrun wrote:Displaying every nth station name is a poor way to avoid overlapping labels.

This approach works fine in Compass.

Try it when you have a survey spiraling down through breakdown or any other situation where there are multiple surveys going through the same patch of map. If you make the plot smaller, so that survey shots are smaller than the size of letters, the labels will start bumping into each other again.

Bob Thrun wrote:

Jeff Bartlett wrote:This approach works fine in Compass.

Try it when you have a survey spiraling down through breakdown or any other situation where there are multiple surveys going through the same patch of map.

To extend my previous sentence:
This approach works fine in Compass with the Lechuguilla line plot.

I bought Styletap for $50, added it to my HP iPAQ then loaded Auriga. It works. Now I am learning to use it. I realize this is a simplistic statement compared to the ongoing technical discussion but I think it is important to note again that Auriga can run on many handhelds.