newbie

[Jerome Alet]

On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Wookey wrote:

> On Mon 05 Nov, Jerome Alet wrote:
> > I wanted to try survex to see how it would fit for archaeological datas.
> > Is anyone using survex in archaeology ?
> 
> Most archaeologists want better detail data than cave-sruvey programs like
> survex produce, although you could use it to produce a very detailed
> positional survey with some effort.
> 
> I know Andrew Chamberlain in the UK has done a lot of work on cave
> archaeology - you can see his stat-of the art visualisations in a draft
> article at:
>  http://lancelot.bms.ed.ac.uk/~wis/cave_visualisation/

I'll look at that ASAP.

> This doesn't use Survex, but you can do stuff similar to this using Tunnel
> (one of the related tools), although right now we've broken the compatibility
> between the two unfortunately.
> 
> Not sure if that helps much.
> 
> Do please tell us what features archaeolgists need in their cave survey
> software and we'll try and bear this in mind for 'Survex 2.0' on which work
> starts shortly. If you want do contribute that would be great.

Unfortunately I'm not an archaeologist so I can't tell for sure. However
I'm planning to do some consulting work in this area and probably replace
a home-made-but-very-outdated tool similar to aven with something more
maintainable, powerful, fast, etc... and aven seems to be very good at
that.

What they need is (I mean in aven or a similar tool):

	- place objects on maps : stones, bones, etc... and add any
	  information they want to an object : x, y, z, dimensions,
	  orientation, weight, etc... Maybe an *object would do it (it may
	  already exist I don't know yet). All these informations should be
	  imported from a text file (or an RDBMS, but a text file like now
	  is perfect), but not necessarily modifiable from the UI.

	- a Find which could search on many fields not only the id (but we
	  already can create searchable ids with the current regexp
	  system) 
          
	- Objects should be representable by empty or filled shapes
	  (squares, triangles, etc...) depending on their nature and if
          possible correctly oriented
	  at least wrt North, but in 3D would be even better. Optionally
          objects should be representable by their own picture
	  (digitized photographs). natures <-> shapes must be configurable
          (a config file is fine, screen would be better but not
	  mandatory)

	- be allowed to get informations on an objet when clicking on it
	  in the view window. In aven it seems this doesn't work yet.

	- 3D grid

	- a plugin system should be available to allow people to do
	  whatever action they need when they click on an object (see
          above). I think about Python or Perl callbacks.

	- allow x/y and z scales to not be bounded together: each may vary
	  independantly

	- a way to launch cavern directly/transparently from aven if you
	  open an .svx file

	- a way to print directly from the menu

	- dxf export. I know it's already there but I've not tested it. If
	it works then it's really wonderful.

	- pdf export. I may be able to help there, but maybe
	  printps+ghostscript are sufficient.

	- a way to launch aven as an applet (!) I think related tools
(Tunnel?) can fit there.


Maybe some of what I ask alkready exist, I'm just discovering survex/aven
now, so please forgive me. Some points, especially the last one, are not
mandatory at all, they would just be great bonuses.

Here are some of their requirements.

I'll be glad to contribute if I can, provided I'm given the time to do it.
I know C and Python very well, but knows near to nothing in the graphic
area. I could help on SQL too, if needed.

bye, and thank you for your interest.

-- 
Jerome Alet - alet@unice.fr - http://cortex.unice.fr/~jerome