Hi there! Unfortunately, due to the way wtherion is designed, it's never guaranteed that you can export the exact same .th2 file that you imported. The information of which object was where in the original text file, or what each line in the file looked like is not retained. But this does not mean the entire .th2 file will be different each time you change something. When exporting, wtherion always uses the same format for the output, which you could say is its canonical format. If you have a repository where all .th2 files are already in canonical format, importing to wtherion, making a single change, and exporting *will* produce only one line of difference. This is probably still not ideal for people who have existing repositories, but this can't really be changed due to wtherion's overall design.
Text-based files and small changes are not required for version control systems to work, but they do make it easier to read the history of changes. Git for example has Git attributes to work around this problem for binary files. It might interest you to learn that new versions of wtherion support saving projects to the filesystem, if you're using a browser that allows it (Chrome, Edge for example). With this, you can check in wtherion projects alongside (or instead of) .th2 files to version control. It still won't be as human-readable as .th2, it's just a JSON string. Also, individual settings for segments (line points in XTherion) are available now. If we were talking about an editor that completely hides Therion's complexities, I don't think the users of that would even use external version control, the versioning would be built into the application, like in Microsoft Office. Obviously, wtherion is not a project to do something this advanced, but maybe in the future there will be one. Thanks for the feedback, Csongor Bruce Mutton <br...@tomo.co.nz> ezt írta (időpont: 2024. ápr. 22., H, 22:27): > > > I have an update to share regarding wtherion, which you hopefully remember > > is my project for a web-based Therion map editor to replace XTherion's map > > editing capabilities: > > > https://github.com/daem-on/wtherion > > > > <snipped> > > > The scope of the project hasn't really changed, but I'd be interested to > > work on other projects that plan to replace the whole of XTherion, or even > > replace text based editing. > > > > Good to see that this project is continuing. It would be nice to have a more > capable editor for Therion drawings. > > Unfortunately I have not had time to look at this update, but hope to do so > at some stage. > > > > Just a comment regarding the value or otherwise of text-based data files in > relation to Therion. > > > > For me a super-power of Therion/XTherion is the ability to support multiple > simultaneous people editing a dataset at one time, and the ability to > interrogate every saved snapshot for the entire history of a project (for > error tracking and recovery, finding bugs). Of course these capabilities are > not built into Therion/XTherion, but my understanding is that they are, by > way of version control (Git, bzr, Hg) only possible because: > > of the text (ascii) based data (.th, .th2) files and > a single edit in the drawing editor results in ONLY a single line changed in > the data (.th2) file. > > > > The earlier implementation of WTherion had two characteristics that made it > unsuitable for the ecosystem that I have built up around my Therion usage: > > a .th2 file loaded into WTherion, saved without making any changes and > exported back to .th2 resulted in a file that had edits on every line. ie it > violated the above requirement that a single entity edit results in a single > line change in the data file, making it ‘unhelpful’ for version control > (particularly if some are using XTherion and some are using WTherion), and > the WTherion data files ‘live’ in a browser cache (I think something like > that) so that a project’s data is no longer stored as a package in a single > location version control. Therefore other users and version control cannot > identify when changes have been made to a project, unless all users are > always rigorous about carrying out the extra steps required to export > WTherion data back to the project folder. > > I think line point characteristics such as ‘altitude .’ and possibly others > that I have grwn fond of were not possible in WTherion. > > > > I appreciate WTherion is just starting out, and am hoping that if multi-user > editing and version control compatibility are front of mind during > development they can be accommodated. > > I think that retaining the paradigm where drawing is interactive and > compilation of outputs is a batch operation is optimal, so don’t see a > particular need to move to more efficient non-text data formats. This is > right outside of my expertise, and I’m an old dinosaur, so will no doubt > stand corrected. > > > > An editor where I could cut, paste, rotate and scale drawing entities would > be a nice addition to the Therion ecosystem, so keep working on it! > > Thanks > > Bruce > > _______________________________________________ > Therion mailing list > Therion@speleo.sk > https://mailman.speleo.sk/listinfo/therion _______________________________________________ Therion mailing list Therion@speleo.sk https://mailman.speleo.sk/listinfo/therion
