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5.4 The future of Tunnel
Tunnel is a great program and you can draw nice cave maps with it,
but there are things it cannot do, and are under development.
The most serious drawback of Tunnel is that it creates only plan map.
It does not create extended elevation maps. This is one of the top
todo items.
Tunnel does not draw symbols along a path. Which is necessary when
drawing a barrier of boulders, for example. This is another item on the
development agenda: a necklace algorithm to place symbols along
a path.
Other two items on the Tunnel development agenda are the replacement of the
XML format with a SVG (scalable vector graphics) format, and the
development of a printing facility.
When you compose the individual sketches to make the global cave map,
the former are not modified, and you end up with a lot of outdated
sketch files (the individual sketches). Tunnel lacks a way or
managing these drawings. You have to
employ a good file keeping policy in order to avoid confusion.
In spite of its limits, we believe that Tunnel is a powerful cave
map drawing software. It is worth getting to know it and use it.
Its main advantages:
- an intuitive drawing interface
with a WYSIWYG (what yuo see is what you get) approach;
- an extendible symbol library;
- its xml-based data design.
marco corvi - Thu May 11 22:41:22 2006
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