Survex for scuba dive surveys

[Wookey]

+++ Jarvist Moore Frost [2015-04-13 13:45 +0100]:
> Is there any sort of style reference for Survex files?

Only the docs, which could certainly be improved - they were mostly
written about 15 years ago and just updated since.

> Or of these particular items of meta data? Does '*team' actually get used
> anywhere in Aven / the exports?

Not directly, so far as I know, but if it's entered in a formal way
then it's possible to use. Troggle parses this data in order to
cross-reference trips and surveyors and logbook entries, for example
(with the CUCC dataset).

> I wasn't aware of the *team flag, nor that Survex can do date-dependent
> declination, I have always calculated it for the year with one of the NOAA
> models, and then used it for all data included thereafter, like:
> https://github.com/jarvist/migovecsurveydata/blob/master/migovecsurveydata/garden/garden-low/s_garden-low.svx

Survex does not yet automatically do date-dependent declination, but
it can't add it in the future if your data doesn't have *date in it.

Therion does, (using essentially the same format), using the
IGRF model. Someone adding this to survex would be v.handy and
save us all doing it by hand. I've created a ticket to track this
feature request: http://trac.survex.com/ticket/54#ticket

> I almost wonder if some kind of way of inlining Markdown / Re-Structured
> text into a 'notes' section might be useful as a way of associating that
> information with the files in a more useful + accessible way.

Feel free to propose something, but it would take a lot to convince me
that this makes sense. As you point out we're not even doing many of
the simple things that _are_ covered by the existing format, so there
doesn't seem to be a strong need for changed formats yet.

> I've found on expeditions that getting cavers to use a pre-generated
> TEMPLATE file has certainly improved the average quality of data. It's much
> easier to expect people to work with an example, than read and consider all
> flags specified.

Agreed.

> Does anyone have anything similar, or suggestions for improvements?

CUCC also use a template file:
http://expo.survex.com/repositories/home/expo/loser/file/7caf2ecdf505/template/new.svx

Wookey
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