------------
Introduction
------------

This section describes what Survex is, and outlines the scope of this manual.

About Survex
============

Survex is a multi-platform Free and Open-Source Software cave surveying
package.  Versions 1.2 and later run on Linux, other UNIX-like platforms,
Microsoft Windows, and macOS.  We're investigating support for phones and
tablets.

We are well aware that not everyone has access to super hardware - often
surveying projects are run on little or no budget and any computers used are
donated.  We aim to ensure that Survex is feasible to use on low-spec machines.
Obviously it won't be as responsive, but we intend it to be usable.  Please
help us to achieve this by giving us some feedback if you use Survex on a slow
machine.

Survex is capable of processing extremely complex caves very quickly and has a
very effective, real-time cave viewer which allows you to rotate, zoom, and pan
the cave using mouse or keyboard.  We have tested it extensively using CUCC and
ARGE's surveys of the caves under the Loser Plateau in Austria (over 90,000
survey legs and over 350km of underground survey data).  This can all be
processed in around 13 seconds on a computer bought in 2012.

Survex is also used by many other survey projects around the world, including
the `Ogof Draenen <https://www.oucc.org.uk/draenen/draenenmain.htm>`__
survey, the `Easegill <http://www.easegill.org.uk/>`__ resurvey project, the OFD
survey, the `OUCC Picos expeditions
<https://www.oucc.org.uk/expeditions/expeditions-spain.htm>`__, and the Hong Meigui
China expeditions.

.. FIXME: hongmeigui.net seems to no longer work

.. FIXME: more projects using Survex

Survex is still actively being worked on.  Version 1.0 was complete in some
sense, but development has continued since.

We encourage feedback from users on important features or problems, which will
help to direct future development.  See the "Mailing List" section of this
manual for the best way to contact us.

About this Manual
=================

If there's a part of this manual you find hard to understand, please do let us
know.  We already know Survex well, so it can be hard for us to spot areas
where the manual doesn't given enough information, or doesn't explain things
clearly enough to follow when you don't know what's going on.  It's helpful is
you can suggest a better wording, but don't worry if you can't, just explain
the problem as precisely as you can.

The master version of this manual is maintained as `reStructured Text
<https://docutils.sourceforge.io/rst.html>`__, and
automatically converted to a number of other formats.  If you are going to send
us *major* changes, it's much easier to include them if you work from this
master version rather than changing one of the generated files.

Terminology
-----------

Throughout this document we use British terminology for surveying:

station
   a point in the cave that you survey from and/or to

leg
   a line joining two stations

survey
   a group of legs surveyed on the same trip
