spud threads

[Andy Waddington on Survey stuff]

Harking back somewhat (I've just got a deluge of mail to wade
through all at once...) Mark identified

> (a) the lack of an editor tailored to entering svx files

I have always regarded one of the strengths of Survex as being the fact that
it allowed me to use whatever editor I was comfortable with to enter my
survey data. I once built a tailored data entry program for SU (on the BBC
micro) but soon realised that *edit was much more useful and have never liked
any software that requires me to learn a whole user interface just to type in
a few figures - learning a file format is usually vastly easier.

Julian is quite right in saying that the data format is much less critical
to users than the interface they see, and someone else makes the point that
users say "I couldn't find the file->open button"... which, to people
brought up in a different environment is the single most detested bit of the
typical Windows interface. It must be important to provide users with a
choice of interfaces, especially at the absolutely fundamental
data-entry/maintenance stage.

So whilst I would certainly not wish to decry efforts to provide a svx-
specific tool for entering and maintaining data, I would strongly argue that
there should be a well-defined data format, and still be a way for those
users that prefer it to edit that format in their favourite editor on their
favourite platform (which was always seen as a problem with HTO by a subset
of those discussing it). There should still be a way to get that data into
the software without imposing a specific GUI's vision of the universe. That
means supporting File->open and every drag-n-drop protocol that your target
platform supports. I don't want to impose ROX filer and RISC OS look and
feel on anyone else, as long as no-one imposes brain-dead Windows idioms on
me :-) My natural reaction to the latter would be to continue to use Survex
1, which means I would no longer contribute to work on the Austria dataset
...

> (h) difficulty in organising svx files

I bet this is the same people complaining ... I'm not surprised they have
problems organising data if they expect everything to work with File->open
menu items, as this tends to make maintaining data in a hierarchy much more
of a pain. Where do they keep their data ? In C:\My Documents ?

I think you need to decide what level of basic competance you are going to
expect in your users. Unfortunately (?) everyone involved in this discussion
is pretty high up on that particular scale - which makes it difficult to get
a feel for how these users (or non-users) think.

Survex does not impose much restriction on how you organise your data,
adapting very well to a number of different preexisting schemes, so in
effect it assumes that users have the basic competance to organise their own
data without imposing some inflexible structure. Perhaps it is this very
lack of guidance that is troubling some users ? If that is the case, then
the problem is not to be addressed by designing something into the UI, but
by providing documentation and advice on possible ways to organise data.

Possibly the software should provide some support for *various* ways of
organising the data, but this should be configurable so users can devise
schemes to suit their own ways of working. Perhaps some sort of "profile"
config ? You could then provide profiles for a few common ways of working,
but allow users to develop their own profiles for specific projects (and
perhaps post these to some central site as examples of how they do it).

Alternatively, perhaps a set of skeleton structures into which data can
be simply edited would be an easier and more transparent way of doing it ?

I like hierarchical organisation - it closely matches the way I organise
stuff in my head. So I find *include to be one of the more useful bits of
the Survex format. If Julian or others don't like it, then they should be
free to organise thair data differently, whilst leaving those who do like
it to organise theirs the way they find convenient...

Mark says:

> There is an interesting comment about a text editor "Aurora" which
> can select columns of text, not just normal blocks.

I seem to recall the programmers' editor "Brief" did this ages ago, and on
the K desktop, kwrite (under menu name "Advanced Editor") does it now.
Surely this must now be fairly common - even Windows users must have a need
for this sort of thing ? It certainly does make moving columns of data about
in survex files much easier. It may not matter to the program what order the
tape/compass/clino come in, but it certainly makes it easier for people if
they are kept the same...

I think all this stuff is very basic and far more important than any of the
stuff about what the program then does with the data. Over the years I have
been using Survex, I have spent far more hours editing and maintaining
survey data than I have in viewing CaveRots, printing out centre lines or
even drawing final surveys. If you don't get the initial data entry right,
then what comes later is just cosmetics - garbage in, garbage out.

Julian is right - everything in the survey book should go with minimal
change into the survey program. However, that it not to say we can't provide
facilities for people to record more things in the survey book - and if
people are recording things they didn't record previously, they will find it
more convenient to organise their survey books along the lines of the format
for Survex input...

Extreme personal views: given a choice between

a) something which worked entirely in windows of its own design, preventing
me from seeing the underlying file format, but providing me with a vast and
exciting range of ways to view the resulting survey and

b) something which gave me full access to the underlying dataset, and full
rein to organise that data according to my own preconceptions, but which
only produced a list of (x,y,z) coordinates at the end of the day for me
to transfer to my own graph paper

I'd probably still go for (b). Its the difference between an open source
project and a commercial one. Open source users want to see how it works and
be able to fix it, or at least complain to the authors. The others don't
want to be able to see inside, and don't mind that commercial secrecy means
the authors prevent them from doing so. I don't think we are targeting that
sort of user. At least, I hope not, because surveyors need to understand
what they are doing !!!

One final point: a major problem I have with some of the other cave survey
software is the degree to which they are pushed. WinKarst is possibly the
worst offender here. Garrie Petrie pushes his software with such vehemence
that I am put off even asking if anyone else has tried it, let alone having
a look myself - I feel that one shouldn't reward this sort of attention-
seeking behaviour by giving any credence to his claims. It might be good,
but who could give a **** ? Don't make this error with Survex/Spud -
anything which needs advertising is bound to give the impression of being
crap whatever its true merits.

Andy