LRUD in Survex

[Mike Lake]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 03:25:23AM +0100, Olly Betts wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 09:46:45PM +0100, Peter Wilton-Jones wrote:
> > Is there any plans to implement [LRUD data] into survex? It may be that
> > you intend to try and put it into Spud?? Is this a thaught.

One problem I see is that there seems to be no concensus on the format of
LRUD data. Some users have just one set of 4 LRUD data points per station
others have two sets; one set "looking into the station" and another set
"looking out of the station". 
Certainly makes it difficult for programmers.

> The database may be the master copy of the raw survey data (entered and
> modifiable using a dedicated editor) or the master copy of the raw surveys
> may be elsewhere in another form (e.g. in a .svx file you can edit with a
> text editor).  Or some mixture of the two - some surveys in .svx files,
> others only in the database.

One of the BIG advantages for me is that svx files are ASCII and editable by
any text editor and because they are text can be edited by utilities such as
sed. Please don't remove power from those that can use advanced text editing
features. Occasionally I have had to make glabal changes to many svx files 
at once and its in times like these that I was glad the svx files were text
and easily edited. A dedicated data entry program and binary data is OK so
long as Survex can still use ASCII files as the master copies.

> Mark has experimented with a scheme to allow plug-ins to be written which
> can be used to split off less commonly used functionality and allow third
> party extensions to be written.

That is good.
 
> I've not seen much of Phil recently thanks to the foot and mouth outbreak,
> so I'm not sure what he's been doing.

I think that F/M has been a boon to cave software users such as myself in
Australia; never before has there been so much rapid development while we
down under just go caving, to come back home and find a new version of
Survex ready for us to try :-) 

Thanks guys :-)

Mike
-- 
Michael Lake, University of Technology, Sydney
Work: Mike.Lake@uts.edu.au Ph: 02 9514 1724 Fx: 02 9514 1628 
Home: http://www.speleonics.com.au
Linux enthusiast, active caver and interested in anything technical.
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