Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

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Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby cavefox » Apr 16, 2009 4:03 pm

Does anyone know of any new software out there that is Mac friendly?
I've seen the overview (http://www.caves.org/section/sacs/surveysw.html) from 2001 on the NSS Survey & Cartography Section.. but the programs on there are VERY old.
Thanks for your help!
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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby Bob Thrun » Apr 17, 2009 12:00 am

Martin Heller's Toporobot is available only in a Mac version. He refuses to make a PC version. I do not know what CPU it is compiled for. He has not updated Toporobot recently. This should not be a concern. Toporobot was advanced at the time and there have not been any great new features ror cave survey programs recently. The one prioblem I can see is that the documentation is available only in German and French.

If you are up to compiling your own copy of a progran, the Survex code is available. I do not know what you would do for graphics iwth it.
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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby Martin Sluka » Apr 17, 2009 1:19 am

Bob Thrun wrote:Martin Heller's Toporobot is available only in a Mac version. He refuses to make a PC version.
If you are up to compiling your own copy of a progran, the Survex code is available. I do not know what you would do for graphics iwth it.


Please, don't forget the therion http://therion.speleo.sk which must be compiled and there must be installed several other programs (all free). It is not so big problem, but for Mac only user a bit complicated. But in combination with DistoX and PocketTopo it is really a dream of cave surveyor.

Toporobot you may find here: http://www.geo.unizh.ch/~heller/toporobot/ there was a version for MacOSX, but I'm not sure if it will work. On my PowerPC machine with 10.4 it works fine.

Survex could be find as a image, but, I'm not sure of version.

There are others programs based on Java, but you should to check Google.

You may contact me directly.

Martin
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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby jharman2 » Apr 17, 2009 1:03 pm

IMO the Therion concept is great but the implementation is poor. I have recently been using Carto and Illustrator.

Carto is a free java program that morphs sketches to fit the lineplot.

http://www.psc-cavers.org/carto/

Carto and Illustrator should run on Mac.
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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby driggs » Apr 18, 2009 12:53 am

Using Codeweavers CrossOver (free 30 day demo, $40 continued use), I've been able to successfully run both Walls and Compass on OS X 10.5.5. This, in my opinion, is unfortunately your best bet for running cave survey software on a Mac.

Carto technically runs on OS X (it is a Java application) but good luck trying to actually get morphed images out of it. I briefly tried patching it (try my OS X Carto.app if you like) but decided that the bit-rot was too painful to deal with; I'm re-writing instead... Besides, Carto will be useless to you unless you can generate a Compass .PLT file first.

Survex 1.1 branch no longer compiles cleanly on OS X. I've patched it to compile and done some work to build an Aven.app, and will continue to do so if there is interest.

Therion requires you to first successfully install Survex and MacTeX, then you must try to compile it from source. Good luck; there's a reason that they don't offer a binary download on the website.

I recently made the switch to OS X (from Linux) so that I could run Adobe Illustrator, but have found the platform to be generally very poor as far as cave survey software goes (and I'm enough of a geek to attempt porting software to the OS myself). I now run all my actual survey software inside a Linux virtual machine (using the Free WINE software to run Walls and Compass), and use OS X for doing the actual map in Illustrator.

Hopefully someone will post with a more optimistic view than I have!

:punch:
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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby Marlatt » Apr 20, 2009 10:47 am

driggs wrote:Using Codeweavers CrossOver (free 30 day demo, $40 continued use), I've been able to successfully run both Walls and Compass on OS X 10.5.5. This, in my opinion, is unfortunately your best bet for running cave survey software on a Mac.


I made a half-hearted attempt to get Compass running using CrossOver (running on OSX 10.4.11), and had some difficulties. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

driggs wrote:Therion requires you to first successfully install Survex and MacTeX, then you must try to compile it from source. Good luck; there's a reason that they don't offer a binary download on the website.


I've had MacTeX running for quite a while, and have been generally happy with the installation. Really nice to have a decent typesetter, finally.

driggs wrote:I recently made the switch to OS X (from Linux) so that I could run Adobe Illustrator, but have found the platform to be generally very poor as far as cave survey software goes (and I'm enough of a geek to attempt porting software to the OS myself). I now run all my actual survey software inside a Linux virtual machine (using the Free WINE software to run Walls and Compass), and use OS X for doing the actual map in Illustrator.


Sounds like a great solution - any pointers or thinks to look out for?

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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby Martin Sluka » Apr 20, 2009 12:10 pm

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 :waving:). 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.
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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby driggs » Apr 20, 2009 10:36 pm

sluka wrote:
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."


I'm a professional Unix software developer with 10 years experience using and contributing to Open Source software extensively. If I can't install Therion, the original poster, despite being brilliant (and beautiful), who is a photographer, not a hacker, doesn't have a chance. OS X users can't even try Therion because there isn't an easy way to install it; I've been on the developer mailing list for over a year, and several people have requested binaries, nobody has been able to provide any. Unless you can prove otherwise, I don't even consider it OS X software.

Users of the Universal Operating System can simply type `apt-get install therion` and have it ready to go. Despite both Fink and MacPorts, OS X users can't do the same.

This thread is about OS X software, so if you would like to discuss Therion in general further, feel free to create a unique thread about it. If you've got a working binary for OS X, I'd love to see it posted in this thread.
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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby driggs » Apr 20, 2009 10:55 pm

Marlatt wrote:
driggs wrote:I recently made the switch to OS X (from Linux) so that I could run Adobe Illustrator, but have found the platform to be generally very poor as far as cave survey software goes (and I'm enough of a geek to attempt porting software to the OS myself). I now run all my actual survey software inside a Linux virtual machine (using the Free WINE software to run Walls and Compass), and use OS X for doing the actual map in Illustrator.


Sounds like a great solution - any pointers or thinks to look out for?


Well, I'll say that it's a good solution for me, since I come from a Linux background. Other OS X users may be more comfortable running some version of Windows inside a virtual machine (VirtualBox, Parallels, VMWare, etc.) instead of Linux.

If choosing a Linux distribution for cave software, I highly recommend Ubuntu or Debian.
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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby Martin Sluka » Apr 21, 2009 2:01 am

driggs wrote:I'm a professional Unix software developer with 10 years experience using and contributing to Open Source software extensively. If I can't install Therion,


OK, I apologize for therion only paragraphs..

But: I'm quite old man ;), I'm NOT a software developer, I have NO ANY experience with Open Source software before therion, and I USE it from the beginning.

I apologize again.

m.
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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby Martin Sluka » Apr 21, 2009 7:05 am

Another "old man" :
Dave wrote:yes
On 21 Apr 2009, at 15:46, Martin Sluka wrote:Hi, Dave,
do you use therion under MacOSX?
Martin

Check the computer's operating system. On screen is PDF viewer, but Dave used the same comp to draw 24 km of Whiterock cave new explorations on Mulu2009 expedition: http://www.daveclucas.com/MuluCaves2009 ... eying.html
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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby Martin Sluka » May 7, 2009 4:35 pm

Not only to write to mailing list :)

Check: http://therion.speleo.sk/wiki/doku.php?id=masox

There you may find the guide how to install Therion including Loch on Mac OS X. It works for me.

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Re: Survey Software for Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Postby Crockett » Jan 15, 2010 4:21 pm

I installed Therion on a Mac OS X laptop but Loch will not work. The install was tedious and took about 4 hours. I think I know why Loch will not work, a faulty script edit, but I don't have the heart to fix it. The Windows desktop install took about 10 minutes. I appreciate Martin promoting Therion. Now I need to climb the learning curve.
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