[therion] Re: survex to therion data conversion

[Stacho Mudrak]

> 'export' only exports up one level - to the surrounding survey, so there 
> are no 'global' names which might clash. So it is not true that you might 
> not be able to join caves.

Then I've not understood the survex manual correctly :)

>> >* therion uses # for comments, survex uses ; (by default)
>> >this is just tiresome - especially for hand-editing conversion
>
> If therion could accept both it would be handy. conversion of
> these chars is easy in theory but the problem is that ";" is/can
> be used in places where it does not mean 'comment' so a simple-minded 
> replacement might make some comments a bit odd.
> It shouldn't break anything though. A converter replacing the
> first one on a line will probably always work.
> (counterexamples?)

No idea. I just have to check - how is it in therion - when the
line is not commented from the beginning.

>> >* Survex uses "begin <surveyname>", therion uses  "survey <surveyname>"
>> >* Survex uses "end <surveyname>", therion uses "endsurvey"
>>
>> endsurvey can be optionally followed by <surveyname>, than it's checked 
>> whether survey and endsurvey parameter match.
>
> I'm fairly sure I got errors in therion 0.2.15 when I tried this....this
> would certainly be better for making the converter simpler (it has to be
> careful about begin/end pairs that are do not start/end surveys.

I've checked this now - it works with my dataset. So if it doesn't work 
with your data, there must be a bug somewhere...

> "assitant" was the best sensible term I could think of. Someone on the
> surveying team who may not actually be surveying but is looking round
> corners, up slopes, and behind boulders to be sure nothing is missed.

Now I understand :)

> Why is that cleaner than a 'survexinclude' directive which does necessary
> conversion?. I suppose it is more general, but going through make is 
> going
> to be confusing to non-programmers I would have thought?

I had in mind, that convertor would never be able to convert corretly all 
survex input data. Using make process - user (programmer) would be able to 
make corrections. But you're right, I've never thought about 'non- 
programmers' :(

> The make target would need to create new files by converting the existing
> survex files, then insert them, or include them, in existing therion 
> files -
> right?

Yes. But I think, that the most important thing now is to create and test 
the conversion script - and then we can decide, how it will be implemented 
in therion.

Regards, S.