Old new stuff

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Revision as of 21:03, 2 September 2008 by Goatchurch (Talk | contribs)
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Moved from front page to keep things tidy.

Less new 2

You can now in the middle of a sketch define new subsets and their inclusion into other subsets using a frame. This can be done by creating an area signal connective path anywhere in the diagram and clicking "Copy" on it. 

<sketchframe
 sfscaledown="1.0"
 sfrotatedeg="0.0"
 sfxtrans="0.0"
 sfytrans="0.0"
 nodeconnzsetrelative="0.0"
 sfsketch=""
 sfstyle="">
<subsetattr name="Duke&space;Street" uppersubset="level5"/>
<subsetattr name="PaceyP" uppersubset="level6"/>
</sketchframe>

This feature is normally used upload values from the text window onto the path for a future "Paste" operation of its values on some other signal, but it also keeps an internal copy of which subsets are in which which can be used as though they are normal subsets defined in the fontcolours.xml file. They appear in brackets in the treeview.

To create a new subset in the sketch for which there are no paths, make a new line in here of the type: 

<subsetattr name="Your new subset" uppersubset=""/>

and press "Copy". The new subset will appear under "_Framerefs_" where you can select it and start applying it. Once you set an uppersubset (say, "level6"), it will appear in that place in the tree.

With this feature it is now technically possible to control all the subset colouring in the image and in the frame sketches entirely from within the sketches and no longer reference it from a special fontcolours.xml file. Indeed, in the fontcolours.xml we only need to define a set of standard colours (including a semi-transparent one) and symbol sets for different scales, and then start using proper names for the small area subsets in the sketch. The mapping is totally done with the 

<subsetattr name="PaceyP" uppersubset="level6"/>

lines. It is possible that these lists will get long an unmanageable for big caves, like the scalebar definitions. However, the implementation will be feature complete, and we can worry about a better user interface later.

The whole managing of subsets issue regarding an improved user interface will take some serious consideration -- as will attempts to redesign the use of the mouse to avoid the need for modifier keys -- but for now it's best to get the functionality stable and workable before redistributing the controls.

Less new

  • The setting up of Frame Sketches has changed and allows the allocations of subsets into other subsets to which there are styles. See Subsets_and_styles#Frames.
  • When centrelines are rendered they now appear on top of the area they should belong to instead of underneath everything.
  • You can now include images as well as sketched in the printing of frames system.
  • It's now possible to reload fontcolours.xml while you are working so you can develop the colours you want there without closing down and starting up again.
  • Survex integration - You can now run cavern.exe and 3dtopos.exe automatically from within Tunnel in order to generate the pos files you need.

Future work

  • The most important missing feature is Elevations.
  • There's also an investigation into abolishing the Tunnel XML file format, and replacing it with a slight elaboration of SVG that would be compatible with all SVG readers, so you wouldn't have to use Tunnel to preview or make thumbnails of your files.
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