+++ Erin Lynch [04-03-01 20:18 -0800]: >> Hi Wooks, >> >> Just wanted to let you know that we're thinking about using Therion to >> trace contours and then writing a script to convert from Therion to >> survex legs.
Interesting idea. If you need this then maybe Therion should incorporate something like it more directly, although I'm not sure how exactly... >> It should be doable, but we're having a few problems with >> our installation of Therion. The biggest one is that if you zoom in on >> a big map the whole thing just becomes unfeasibly slow. Dunks thinks >> it's probably making a bitmap (or something) of the entire image at >> high res, which is why it's so slow. Any ideas? Yep - that's right, in fact there is more than one copy. I found the same problem. (on a 64MB machine attemting to zoom to 200% on a 4MB scan makes the whole thing disapear in a puff of smoke). Complaining to the Therion list elicited this explanation: >> 200% of 3.8Mb = 4Mb original image + 16Mb scaled image + 20Mb canvas RGBA >> buffer = 40MB = 60% of RAM. This may be a problem, especially on some >> operating systems. The problem is that tcl's functions are used for the image management. tcl stores images internally as full RGB, so making them b/w or greyscale doesn't save any RAM, and it doesn't do anything clever like image-manipulation programs to only expand the visible tile. Something could probably be done to improve this but it's not trivial. This is a tradeoff of using a quick-prototyping language for the GUI rather than doing it the hard way. For the tme being you need to work with either a machine with loads of RAM or smaller images. Some work to see if TCL's handing can be improved in this regard would also be a good idea. I agree it's a serious problem, stacho doesn't seem entirely convinced yet. >> The other problem is that the lines, control points and handles are all >> a bit too chunky to be useable. Any idea what magic rune we need to >> change in order to make them a bit smaller? Nope - ask the list - they are _really_ helpful. (the ctrl modified lets you place points very close to other points which helps with the 'can't zoom' problem). cc:ed to Therion list Wookey -- Aleph One Ltd, Bottisham, CAMBRIDGE, CB5 9BA, UK Tel +44 (0) 1223 811679 work: http://www.aleph1.co.uk/ play: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~wookey/
