Mōrena (Good Morning)
Yes, two new children on the street! Mapiah and Therion Studio are looking like viable alternatives to XTherion. My journey… * Nineteen years learning to love XTherion * Six months occasionally playing with Mapiah * Three weeks dabbling with Therion Studio I haven’t seriously tried to learn the latter two, just kept banging my head against them to see what it feels like. Both could do with searchable help files. Where I’ve ended up. * Using my favourite text editor to have all the Therion files I might need ready to edit or launch in an app (a 17 year habit) * Mapiah is my compiler every time – faster and cleaner than XTherion * XTherion is my drawing editor – familiar, object parameters are efficiently typed in * Mapiah is my drawing editor if I want to move, stretch rotate a bunch of objects or background image, then I save and head back to XTherion * Studio is what I look at in awe – but apart from the obvious, have not figured it out yet Below is a gut feel comparison, based on dabbling only, and without bothering to read all the instructions and learn the capabilities. Using Windows 11… Characteristic XTherion Mapiah Therion Studio Development repo therion/therion: therion – cave surveying software <https://github.com/therion/therion> https://github.com/rsevero/mapiah https://github.com/ladislavb/therion-studio Speed Slow to load and redraw th2 files Long delay before compile on some devices Very fast th2 rendering and fast compilation. Mapiah’s strength Slow to load the App, fast th2 rendering and compilation Version control friendly (does not rewrite th or th2 file structure if was edited by another App) Mostly compliant if edited with other apps Yes, minor exceptions Yes, as far as I’ve tested Drawing interface Not consistent with modern capabilities and norms (cannot move or transform whole objects, must be moved point by point). Modern capabilities (move and transform whole objects and collections of objects). Mapiah’s strength but Bewildering array of line object editing capabilities An improvement on traditional XTherion capabilities. Yet to explore the capabilities in this respect It might well be Studio’s strength Freehand line drawing No No Yes Facilitates everything Therion can do, and supports legacy workflows such as interactive manual survey data entry. Yes No, or at least not yet Unsure, although it expands on XTherion’s functionality in many areas Can use multiple instances to work on same or multiple projects and multiple applications (eg text editors) simultaneously. Yes Yes Initial experiments suggest multiple instances OK, but only one project at a time Can be used as a compendium single instance editor (th, th2, compiler). Yes Yes, except for general text (th) files Yes, and seems not to like NOT being used this way. Includes error detection & correction, live access to object parameter help. Studio’s strength Most objects can be created efficiently with minimum clicks and maximum typing. Yes, XTherion’s strength No, very very clicky Haven’t used enough to know. Not yet figured out how to draw within the bounds of a scrap object, for example Object visualisation only as points, lines and (if you hold your tongue right) areas Better symbolisation Astounding th2 visualisation. All Therion conceptual objects can be viewed (and edited) as symbolic blocks. Studio’s strength Live update if another App changes open file on disk No No Yes Development pace Steady consistent improvement over 30 years Recent rapid development until 2 months ago Recent rapid development So there it is. Tell me what I’ve missed and where I’m wrong. I’m pretty excited about both Mapiah and Studio. Thanks Rodrigo and Ladislav, your efforts are much appreciated. Bruce Mutton From: Therion <[email protected]> On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, 1 July 2026 21:34 To: Therion List <[email protected]> Subject: [Therion] Therion Studio 2026.6.9 Hi all, New version of Therion Studio (https://github.com/ladislavb/therion-studio) is out, with lot of quality-of-life improvements, bugfixes and performance improvements. See https://github.com/ladislavb/therion-studio/releases/tag/v2026.6.9 I would like to thank all the testers who tested the app, reported issues and suggested improvements. Especially Martin Sluka, Bruce Mutton, Axel Hack and Alex (apgeo) and Therion devs (Stacho, Martin). I recently noticed that the Mapiah project (https://github.com/rsevero/mapiah) is attempting to address the same issue: creating a modern replacement for Xtherion. Unfortunately, I encountered difficulties in running the project on my Mac or even building it from an Xcode project. Despite these challenges, But I’ve heard good things about Mapiah and it seems to be quite mature. Therefore, my objective is to maintain maximum interoperability between Xtherion, Mapiah, and Therion Studio, enabling seamless transitions between these tools. I’m genuinely curious to know the differences between Mapiah and Therion Studio. Has anyone use both? L.
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