xtherion is not a user interface. It si only an advanced text editor with a funny history.

From the wiki and a communication by S. Mudrak, Oct 3, 2006.

During the years 1996-98 S. Mudrak and M. Budaj have surveyd the Cave of dead bats system (20 Km) and completed an atlas of the cave by drawing the map by hand on the plot of the centerline. They tried to use AutoCad but when new passages where discovered and loops closed, they found that they were not able to adapt the cave map to the data.

In 1999 they abandoned AutoCad and started thinking about a program to draw cave maps. They knew about MetaPost (a programming language for graphics), Survex (for cave survey processing) and TeX for typesetting. It was jus a matter of glueing these together. They started in the fall, and by the end of the year (Dec. 27) there was a first version of therion, written in PERL.

In 2000 Stacho worked on a user interface xthedit (in Tcl/Tk). This first version of xtherion did not have any lines or points. You just clicked on the image and the corresponding text appeared in the text editor. In the meanwhile the code of therion was developing.

In 2001 there was a discussion with Martin Heller in Zurich, in which many problems were discussed. Then Martin Budaj started with project in Delphi with some visual tool. It was working, but there was a lot of problems porting Delphi code to Linux. At that time we were using almost only Linux, and tere were no portable graphical user interfaces between Windows (Win32) and Linux.

Then Stacho Mudrak coded the core elements of therion: points, lines, etc. The maps were working, but there was no editor. Suddenly a flood came; they had the Danube water in the office, and had unexpected holidays. Stacho had nothing to do, so he started coding on xtherion and modified the old version to support points and lines. The program was written in C++ and PERL. This was enough to digitize over 20 km of caves.

From then, a lot of features were added, but nobody did any substantial change in the user interface. In 2002 appeared version 0.1, in March, with xtherion (in Tcl/Tk). In July there was version 0.2 which could put together scraps to form a map. In October the user mail group started.

In March 2003 Martin Budaj completed The Therion Book. Version 0.2.13 was available in June that year. All the PERL script were rewritten in C++.

In April 2004 therion version 0.3 appeared. It could export 3D models, created from 2D maps, and had a loop closure algorithm. It had a completely new install kit for Windows. The czech support was added with version 0.3.1, and the french one with 0.3.2. Topographical maps and grids were added with version 0.3.3 in September.

In 2005 LRUD support was added (version 0.3.6) as well as map coloring. The spanish support was added. SVG and DXF exports were added in May. In August 2005 buttons were added to the xtherion map editor by (D. Zachariadis).

The last version 0.3 (10) was out in April 2006 and version 0.4.0 appeared in October 2006. It had a new 3D viewer (loch), and an improved VRML export. The italian support was added.

Version 0.5.0 came out early February 2007. It included many new features. Among them the support for geographic coordinate systems and transformation among them, and the export in shape files. The german support was added.

Version 0.5.1 was released August 2007. It can display maps at an offset and has a map-connection point/line to indicate the connecting lines. The maps exported from the certerline have the dimension envelope generated from the LRUD data. It is possible to have used-defined symbols (points, lines, and areas). xtherion can import DXF/SVG files. The russian support has been added in the fall 2007.

Version 5.2 was released August 2008. The leading '0' has been dropped from the version number. There are enhancements in the syntax (user-defined attributes, subtypes, station point flags). Among the new features are grid labelling, label coloring, new shot flags, new station flags, and new layout options. Therion has also list-exports.

Version 5.3 was release February 2010. Among the new features are the possibility to select a specific language for each string, filtering for the continuation and survey lists export, support for right-to-left writings, unicode in PDF, georeferencing data added to the PDF, symbol coloring (layout option), support for splay shots, new translations, sketches displayed in map layer in PDF and SVG.

Version 5.4 (to come) includes new point types (ice and clay deposits and formations), line wall subtypes (in particular "pit"), new symbol groups (icae and sediments), and the Australian symbol set.

Now we are waiting for another flood, when Stacho or somebody else will have a lot of time to code a new user interface. wxWindows will probably be used for the user interface and AntiGrain for the 2D geometry. Some database or XML will be used as file format, but we need suddenly a lot of free time. Or maybe somebody will be inspired by therion and will do this work instead of the authors, using the tools he/she likes.