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20001230: McIDAS setup at UNCA (cont.)

>From: Leigh Orf <address@hidden>
>Organization: UNCA
>Keywords: 200012121654.eBCGsDo24855 McIDAS-X install

Leigh,

>Hope you are having an enjoyable holiday.

It has been OK except that I have basically worked every day :-(

>My wife and I got stuck in
>the recent icestorm in central Arkansas... not fun from a travelling
>perspective, but quite neat from a meteorological one! Luckily the sun
>came out Thursday and melted enough ice to get us out onto the highway.

The thing I really hated when I lived in New Hampshire/Vermont was
ice storms!

>I solved my last problem... the one I last wrote about, which was the
>topo-composite AREA files not being produced. I copied the AREA9???
>files from /home/mcidas/data to /data/mcidas/data and now the composite
>imagery is being produced. I'm not sure if that was the "right"
>solution;

I am sorry to say that it was not.  It is much better to leave the
topographic images (AREA9*) in ~mcidas/data and change your set
of REDIRECTions to locate the images intested from the IDD/decoded
by ldm-mcidas pnga2area in the /data/mcidas/data directory.  This
is one of the things I was referring to in the way that Jim H.
had things setup at UNCA.

>I thought I had the paths set such that mcidas should have
>known where those topo AREA files were.

I did have a few minutes in which I logged onto your machine to take
a quick look.  What I saw in ~mcidas/data/LOCAL.NAM was a setup that
was preventing the compositing from working since the REDIRECTion
for AREA* to /data/mcidas/data meant that that was the only place
McIDAS could look for images with the name AREA9*.  I suggest dropping
back and embracing (:-) the examples in EXAMPLE.NAM.

>Secondly, I have succesfully gotten stuff to be transferred via the ADDE
>server. That was actually pretty easy to get set up. My cable modem
>service provider does not (yet!) cap data flow from "weird" ports, so I
>get the data coming in as fast as it can. Stuff displays noticably
>faster than via NFS.

ADDE is very cool in this respect.  It is so transparent, for example,
that I was loading images from the RTIMAGES dataset to my machine here
at home (ADSL w/1284 Kb down) and I didn't even notice that I had left my
DATALOC pointing to vortex.  So very cool!

>However, I noticed that most of the commands which are executed via
>the tcl interface do not use ADDE commands.

That is correct.  The MCGUI is scheduled to go a complete overhaul/ADDEization
in the next one/two months.

>If I display a satellite
>image or a satellite loop via the tcl interface, the ALOOP command is
>executed, which is a standard mcidas command which reads data from my
>NFS mounted /data/mcidas/data disk. Is there a way to have the tcl
>interface make use of the ADDE?

I have to do some recoding.

>Interestingly enough, the F-key interace
>*does* seem to use the ADDE and executed the IMGDISP command!

Yes, the Fkey menu was ADDEized.  This gave users two options.

>I'm sure
>you're aware of the inconsistency but would be interested in your
>comments.

This difference is documented in the McIDAS Release Notes.  I have been
wanting to upgrade the MCGUI for three years, but McIDAS was not really
finished enough to provide all of the functionality that existing sites
were used to with ADDE routines.  Since it now is ready, I have my work
cut out for me.

>I also received an email from the mcidas-users@ssec list stating that in
>order to view the upcoming NEXRAD data, you have to install their latest
>"fast-track" mcidas release which is 7.704. Are you familiar with these
>fast-track releases, and would you recommend my upgrading?

You are not allowed to get MUG Fastrack releases from SSEC unless you are
a MUG member.  You get your upgrades from Unidata (me).  By the way,
the NEXRAD display/serving support in the MUG Fastrack is my code, and
it is already in my/the Unidata release!

>I don't want
>to go through all that hassle and screw up what I've worked hard to get
>working right. However, I would like to be able to view the radar data
>once I tell the LDM to ingest it.

You do have the code to do this.  I will, however, be issuing an addendum
to my release early next week.  This addendum will contain the latest
iteration of changes that SSEC developers and I finished this past week.
Loading in an addendum is easy and will not cause things to stop working,
so fear not ;-)

>Later,

Have a good holiday!

Tom