20001005: Gempak, special symbol and line

>From: Luis Farfan <address@hidden>
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200010051916.e95JGn114054

>
>I am interested in learning ways to include special symbols in the
>generation of displays with gempak. The program "sfmap" is used to plot
>surface observations and need to include in this plot the position of a
>hurricane. I know that I create a file with the position of the hurricane
>and include is as part of the "STNPLT" and indicate the marker type
>desired. This type seems to be limited to only 21 options and none of them
>has any "hurricane symbol".

Luis,

I added marker types 22 and 23 for tropical storm and hurricane
respectively. 

>
>After consulting the GEMPAK, N-AWIPS user's guide, I found that Appendix C
>describes symbols, lines and markers. A hurricane appears as part of the
>"SPECIAL SYMBOL" section (#6 or #7), but I am not able to find how to 
>include it as part of my choice in STNPLT.
>
>Could you please help me to find a way to include this symbol via this
>program variable(STNPLT)?
>If this is not possible, would you like to provide other options?
>
>Also, is any of the gempak programs able to allow drawing a line between 2
>given positions (or stations)?

Luis,
There was a contributed gpline program:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/coohl/mhonarc/MailArchives/gembud-list/msg00754.html

The source code is in the ftp directory:
~gbuddy/nawips-5.2.1/contrib/gptext.tar.Z.suny
I have not tested this program with version 5.4 but could look into it
if the readme file sounds like what you are interested in.

Steve CHiswell
Unidata User Support

>
>Thank you very much,
>Luis M Farfan.
>