THERION(1)

✨ NAME ✨

therion — bestie, it's the program that draws cave surveys 💖

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

therion [-q] [-L] [-l log-file]
        [-s source-file] [-p search-path]
        [-b|--bezier] [--use-extern-libs]
        [-g|-u] [-i]
        [-d] [-x] [--use-extern-libs] [config-file]

therion [-h|--help]
        [-v|--version]
        [--print-encodings]
        [--print-environment]
        [--print-init-file]
        [--print-library-src]
        [--print-symbols]
        [--print-tex-encodings]
        [--print-xtherion-src]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Okay so this manual page is the quick lil overview of Therion and the whole package vibe. Not the deep lore — just enough to get you oriented. 🫶

Therion is the program that processes Therion data files and turns them into cave surveys. The data files are usually:

• .th files — these hold the survey data, and honestly they're largely equivalent to Survex .svx files.
• .th2 files — these hold the drawing data.
• thconfig files — these are the ones in charge, bestie. They control which data files get used and which maps get output. 👑

And what does Therion spit out at the end? PDF and SVG files for the drawings, Survex .3d files, Compass .PLT files, and VRML files for the 3D models. It's giving range. ✨

Therion doesn't do it all alone though — it uses a bunch of helper programs:

• Survex processes the centreline data.
• MetaPost draws the cave symbols.
• pdfTeX generates the final maps.

Now, entering drawing data by hand would be lowkey tragic, and editing survey files should not be a struggle, so there's a graphical editor included: XTherion. It also has a 'compiler' function that runs Therion on your data to produce output. That part is implemented using Tcl/Tk. No cap.

The way Therion works is kind of iconic actually: the data files describe the cave as text, in terms of objects, so the graphical representations only get inserted at output generation time. Which means you can produce a survey using whichever symbol set you require — you just specify the relevant set of MetaPost macros. Currently the UIS symbol set is supported. 💅

Multiple languages and character sets are supported — currently ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2, ISO-8859-5, ISO-8859-7, UTF-8, ASCII and CP1250. Global queen behaviour fr fr. 🌈

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🎀 ARGUMENTS 🎀

therion takes exactly one argument — a config-file. That's it, that's the whole menu.

If you don't specify a file, then the default thconfig file in the current directory gets used. And if you want a brand new default file? That's what the -g option is for. 🫶

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

This program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (--). A summary of options is included below. For a complete description, see The Therion Book. 📖

• -h, --help — shows you a lil summary of the options. Very "hi bestie, here's the map". 🗺️
• -v, --version — shows version information. ✨
• -q — quiet mode — minimise output. 🤫
• -g — generate a new configuration file. If you gave a config-file, that's the one it'll be; if not, it's thconfig in the current directory. > Heads up: if the file already exists, it will be overwritten. 💀
• -i — ignore comments when writing the (-g|-u) configuration file.
• -L — do not create a log-file. Normally all messages are written into a therion.log file.
• -l log-file — change the name of the log file.
• -p search-path — sets the search path (or list of paths, separated by colon) that therion uses to find its source files — but only if it doesn't find them in the working directory first. 🧚
• -q — run therion in quiet mode. It will print only warning and error messages (to STDERR). Yes bestie, it's listed again. Two -qs, one vibe. 😭
• --print-encodings — print a list of all supported encodings.
• --print-init-file — print a default initialisation file. For more details see the Initialisation section in the Appendix of the Therion Book.
• -s — set the name of the source file.
• -u — upgrade the configuration file.
• -d — turn on debugging mode. The current implementation creates a temporary directory named thTMPDIR (in your system temporary directory) and does not delete any temporary files. It's giving messy. 🙈

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• loch(1), xtherion(1)

For full information see The Therion Book (/usr/share/doc/therion-doc/thbook.pdf) which describes Therion and its use in detail. Go read it, it's the main character. 👑

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🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

Stacho Mudrak and Martin Budaj. This manual page was originally written by Wookey wookey@debian.org for the Debian system. Modified by MB.

Copyright Wookey 2003, Martin Budaj 2003. This file is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

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And that's the whole page, bestie — this was the General Commands Manual entry for THERION(1), dated 2017/01/25. Slay, go draw a cave. 💖🎀🦋