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Re: 20020425: netCDF contribution

>To: "'address@hidden'" <address@hidden>
>From: "Flynn, Connor J" <address@hidden>
>Subject: netcdf contribution
>Organization: PNNL
>Keywords: 200204250159.g3P1xLa06595 netCDF

Hi Connor,

> My name is Connor J. Flynn.  I work for PNNL with the ARM (Atmospheric
> Radiation Measurements) program.  We are heavy users of netcdf.
> 
> We have done some development work that we'd like to contribute to the
> general community.
> 
> One contribution is (yet another) netcdf Perl interface. Ours is based
> on netcdf 3 and perl5.  We've compiled it for Unix and Windows (with
> cygwin gcc).  The syntax of the interface closely resembles the C
> library function calls, making porting of programs from C to Perl
> simple.

Thanks, that sounds useful.  One way to make it available would be for
you to provide us with a URL for a web page describing your Perl
interface and providing a download link.  Then we'll include a link to
your URL on our netCDFPerl page at

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf-perl/

and an entry under the list of netCDF Perl interfaces at

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/software.html#Perl

and finally an entry on the "What's New" page at:

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/whatsnew.html

We could also announce the availability and features of the new Perl
interface on the address@hidden mailing list, unless
you'd rather do that yourself.

> The second contribution is a program we have called "NCDX" for NetCdf
> Display and eXtraction.  (Unfortunately, I see that Patrick Jckel has
> already provided a utility with this name.  We are discussing an
> appropriate name change...  )  The utility we have developed is a
> command-line utility permitting ascii data extraction and/or display of
> data from netcdf files.  For data extraction, the user has substantial
> control over the precision and representation of the data (number of
> decimals, base-10, octal, hexadecimal, etc.)  For display of data, our
> utility is built around the DISLIN scientific graphics library.
> Overlay plots are supported (more than one variable in same plot) as
> are multiple axes and separate x and y axes for plotted fields.  Data
> may span multiple netcdf files.  Both 2-D and 3-D plots are supported.
> Several output file formats are supported including postscript, EPS,
> PNG, TIF, and more.  We are also in the process of developing a
> web-based interface to make the utility more approachable for those not
> comfortable with command-line interfaces.  Here is a link:
> http://playground.arm.gov/~sbeus/ncdx-web/html/index.html

Thanks, that sounds really useful, too.  You've already provide the
URL for NCDX, so we can proceed with adding its description to our
software page and making a "What's New" entry.  I'll write drafts and
let you review them before adding them to our site.  I should have
something for you early next week; if you don't seem them by
Wednesday, please remind me.  But if there will be a name change, I
need to know about that first.

> Please let me know if you'd like for me to submit these for inclusion
> in your utilities library and how I should do that.

On behalf of the whole netCDF community, thanks for all the effort
that went into this software and for your generosity in making it
freely available.

--Russ

_____________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu