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20040409: Replacing maps

>From: "Paul Gifford" <address@hidden>
>Organization: 
>Keywords: 200404091449.i39EnYCT028422 IDV maps

Hi Paul-

>  Is there any way to replace the maps (or map data) built in to the IDV
>with other maps or data?  I have a request to integrate the output of a call
>to a map server (which I believe returns an image) with data visualized with
>the IDV and show the result in the IDV.  It may be possible to get vector
>data from the map server too - I'm trying to find that out.  Is something
>like this even possible?

As with many things in the IDV, you can accomplish this in several
ways.  

1) If you want your own set of maps, you could create an
XML file (e.g., mymaps.xml) with the map specifications and then start 
the IDV with your own properties file that would point to that map.  
The property file entry would look like:

application.viewmanager.properties = mapConfigFile=/home/paul/mymaps.xml

(or wherever you want to put that resource).  The format for the
XML file is the same as what's in /auxdata/maps/maps.xml:

<maps>
  <map
       source="/auxdata/maps/OUTLSUPW"
       description="World Coastlines"
       visible="false"
       color="0x00CC00"
       linewidth="1.0"
       linestyle="0"
       />

  <map 
     <props for second map>
  />

  ....
</maps>

Right now we handle McIDAS maps and ESRI shape files.  You could
create your own map reader based on the code in ucar.visad classes
for maps and add it to the MapFamily.

2) An alternative would be to just set the default maps to all be
off, and read in the data from the map server and display it.
Once you had the display, you could use the Defaults->Save As Default...
menu to save this as part of your default bundle and it would always 
appear when the application was started.  In the latest release,
we added beta support for accessing Web Map Services (WMS).  If
you know the URL of a WMS server, you could input that in the
cataloged data chooser.  We've tested this pointing to the GLOBE
server: http://viz.globe.gov/viz-bin/wmt.cgi?WMTVER=1.1&REQUEST=capabilities
This is all beta code, but might be a starting place.

BTW, I recently got an inquiry from someone else wanting to
display data at a single point (LIDAR time/height cross section).
I've almost got this working and I will generalize it for the probe
and time series as well.  That may help you in the future.

Let me know if you have questions on the suggestions above.

Don Murray
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