Q's about Survex (Linux, etc)

[Wookey]

+++ Nancy Pistole [2009-02-16 10:30 -0800] wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>     I am pretty new to using Survex, although I've been on projects 
> where I've seen it used. I got it up and running on my Mac and a PC 
> laptop. My ultimate goal was to get it running on a little netbook 
> that I got that runs Linux (the netbook, an Asus eeePC 901, is very 
> small and easy to travel with). However, I'm not familiar with Linux, 
> and I just found out that this Asus netbook runs a version of Linux 
> called Xandros. Before I even attempt the installation, I was 
> wondering if you had any experience with using Survex on these little 
> netbooks. 

Yep. I've got an Acer aspire here which runs survex and aven (and
therion) quite happily. 

> One option I am considering, is to bite the bullet and just 
> install Windows on the netbook (along with Linux), so I can use 
> whichever OS I need.

You have the choice. Installing survex on Xandros probably isn't hard
- it's a debian-based distro and survex is in Debian, but it almost
certainly isn't in their relatively small subset of Debian which you
can just select and install. So, you'd need to download the debs and
install them locally with dpkg -i survex survex-aven. That may or may
not require you to download some other dependencies to make it work. 

My aspire came with Linpus Linux which was neat but had exactly the
same problem so after a while I just installed Debian on it instead,
exactly so that I could trivially just select Survex and Therion and
install them (and about 10,000 other packages). It took a bit of
fiddling initially but it actually works rather better with Debian
than it did with Linpus. The same is probably true on the eee.

In general life is much easier if you only install stuff the distro
provides, so for long-term surveying goodness I'd recommend replacing
your Xandros with Debian. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/ 

>    The other question I had is about Aven--I have a .3d file that 
> some one sent me for a cave, but I would like to see the actual 
> numbers for the legs in the survey. Is there any way to extract those 
> from a .3d file, or do I need to see if I can get the .svx file?

Well, there is 3dtopos which will give you x,y,z coordinates and
stattion names from the 3d file like this:
(35449.84, 81086.85,  1580.99 ) 31.elchalt.31
(35449.34, 81089.01,  1583.37 ) 31.elchalt.32
(35394.38, 81035.52,  1582.29 ) 31ausn.0
(35394.28, 81046.11,  1589.44 ) 31ausn.a
(35383.11, 81039.40,  1585.71 ) 31ausn.b
(35395.41, 81044.60,  1588.31 ) 31ausn.laser9
(35766.00, 81127.00,  1568.00 ) 32.1
(35766.00, 81127.00,  1548.00 ) 32.2
(35652.55, 82212.53,  1666.13 ) 36tob4.1

But to get actual leg data, you need the original .svx file. You could
generate approximate survex data from a 3d file as it has the
connectivity and the xyz info, but I don't know af anything that does.

>    Also, I signed up for the Survex mailing list and the Cave 
> Surveying list--would these questions be more appropriate to post on 
> the lists? (I haven't received any messages from either list, so I 
> don't know what the protocol is.)

They would. I've copied this answer to the survex list.

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Balloonz - Toby Churchill - Aleph One - Debian
http://wookware.org/