Re: [Therion] cross-section drawing

[Wookey]

On 2006-12-21 13:11 +0100, Stacho Mudrak wrote:
> Quoting Wookey <address@hidden>:
> > alongside the cave, and their natural scale is 'the same as the plan'.
> > It would be nice if there was some way to specify the scale as 'like
> > scrap foo'.
> 
> By default, when you insert scrap, the scale is set up to scale of  
> last scrap edited. So theoretically, you need to set scale once and  
> then just insert new scraps.

OK - that should help. 

The problem with the whole 'move two squares
and set corner co-ords' is that it is rather innacurate. ther can be
quite large errors in x-sect drawins and these are amplified by this
method. If that scale is then repeated for all the x-sects in a file
you could easy end up with them all being 20% too big.

> I need to have a look, what can I do about -scale-like option.

A scale taken from the overall map (properly scaled with stations) is
that it is much more likely to be correct, and a typical avergae (not
a value from the ends of the bell curve, which you might get using a
random x-sect to scale all the others). So this seems to me to be much
better (as well as much quicker).

> > The biggest problem is finding the corner-markers.
> 
> 100% agree. Shame on me :(
> 
> I see following improvements easy to code:
> 1. Adding a thick red arrow joining scale markers.
> 2. Adding a button that will put scale markers + arrow into center of  
> current screen.
> Would it help you? Do you see other solutions?

Moving the two markers to the middle would suit me best (as to draw
x-sects I am always zoomed in to max 400%, so even a big arrow could
take a while to find). 

Could you get confused as to which marker is which and
thusaccidentally reverse the x-sect? If so them either make them diff
shapes or colours, or put them slightly to corners.

Really I don't want to move markers - I want to place them by clicking
on corner points. That would be very quick and easy. So think a button
for 'next two clicks place scale markers' would be best - but maybe
that is not easy to code?

There is a whole load of other stuff to do with grouping x-sects and
auto-placing them in a box/area, and labelling section lines and
corresponding sections that also needs to be addressed, but I
think that is already on the to-do list. Therion ought to make sorting
out sections easier but in fact it current makes it slightly harder
than hand-drawing (which was already very tedious).

Terikan is a good example of a cave where sections next to passages
doesn't work very well - too many underlying and overlying layers.

We have a general (and very difficult) problem of what to do about
labels and sections in the presence of over/under lying passages. I am
not yet sure what the answers are but there is definately much room
for improvement.

Wookey
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