Export formats - JSON

[Graham Mullan]

I think this exchange between Martin and Philip highlights a problem which some of us and hoped had been put to rest by Survex and Therion some time ago.

Data in Survex's format can be read and understood very easily by people with no computer experience at all. One does have to think about how you organise data, but again that is a human issue not a programming one, and what is output is not as detailed as one would like, but is still very usable.

Therion uses an almost identical data entry pattern for basic data and organisation. Its basic pattern remains easily readable and understandable by people. The drawing overlay is rather more complicated, but as the user interface that produces it is graphical it remains easy for a person (me) to see, grasp and edit.

I am willing to bet, however, that a th2 file does not have a structure that is, to quote Philip "a standard format that can be used in pretty much any 
 programming language."

The question becomes: For whom do we wish to make life easier, computer programmers or cave surveyors? As a semi-literate computer person but one who has taught Survex and Therion to a number of surveyors, I am pretty sure that there are more surveyors than there are survey software writers out there and those are the people that we need to keep on board.

And, after 8 years of using Therion and about 18 using Survex, I am still spending time entering historic data onto computers. These jobs can require much thought to work out exactly what was being recorded and how. On the latest one I am still trying to work out how the two surveyors knew which were backsights and which were foresights. Having to go back in and edit their data line by line is straightforward in a text editor. It'd be a nightmare in a JSON format.

Just my two penn'orth.

Graham

-----Original Message-----
From: Survex [mailto:survex-bounces at survex.com] On Behalf Of Martin Sluka
Sent: 23 June 2016 08:09
To: Philip Schuchardt <vpicaver at gmail.com>
Cc: survex at survex.com; Michael Lake <mikel at speleonics.com.au>
Subject: Re: Export formats - JSON


> 23. 6. 2016 v 0:09, Philip Schuchardt <vpicaver at gmail.com>:
> 
> JSON is a standard format that can be used in pretty much any 
> programming language.

I understood what is JSON now. But it is very good for programing languages but very problematic for humans reading. Any word as „station“ is repeated any time it is used, what is horrible compared to table style data.

Any way, it should be very simple to parse Survex's, Therion’s or other programs data to JSON and back to plain text.

> Metacave isn't designed to be written by hand like Therion and Survex 
> files.

I didn’t want to hand write JSON, I asked way you simple not use analysis of problem of cave surveying from Survex, where are I think defined all possible methods used for cave surveying, all units, etc.

The same about Therion. There are very clever ideas of name spaced surveys and surveys structure and the same for idea of scraps and independent definitions and structures of maps using name spaces.

Therion is definitely not only strange map editor with automatic round-tripping. There are few ideas I like very much.

Metapost and TeX behind Therion have their reasons too. They are most powerful tools for generating symbols and pieces of maps and for page layout till now. Free, multi-platform and universally used for typesetting from Indians to hieroglyphs languages. So no any big problem to generate map in any of local languages. And no any big problem to define your own symbols or add any colorful graphics.

Best regards

Martin





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