Re: noaaport header information (fwd)

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Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
address@hidden             WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 10:46:12 -0700 (MST)
From: John Snook <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
     Michael Voss <address@hidden>,
     John Snook <address@hidden>, address@hidden
Subject: Re: noaaport header information


Well, it's a two step process:

The site that Jeff notes at 

   http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oso/dir_subset.shtml#ncf

does only provide headers with no descriptions.

Then one can get a brief description by decoding the header at

   http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oso/hdecode.shtml

But I agree with Peter, it would be nice to have a page that 
contains all headers with a brief description attached.

John
Colorado Research Associates
address@hidden


> 
> Jeff et al:
> 
> The site you reference only lists the headers as far as I know.  What John was
> looking for, I believe,
> is not only the headers, but a description of what is contained under each 
> header.
> Frankly, I don't think what John is looking for exists.  The NOAAPORT pages 
> that an
> earlier
> poster mentioned, refer to the Appendix K documents (Word Perfect 
> Spreadsheets with
> data
> content information).  However, it really requires alot of extra work and
> cross-referencing to relate that info in those 20-or-so Spreadsheets to get
> after what John (and so many others) really want to know.
> 
> In my opinion, the ideal document would be an alphabetical listing of 
> NOAAPORT/WMO
> headers, each with a one-or-two sentence  description of the content expected 
> to be
> found under that
> header.   It would probably be sufficient to have the listing broken down 
> only by
> the
> first 6 chars (e.g. by the SAUS80 part) and if there are sufficient 
> differences in
> the
> content by the rest of the header (e.g. if SAUS80 KWBC is significantly 
> different
> than SAUS80 KABC)
> then the description could point this out.
> 
> The one thing that comes closest to this is the Alden FOS catalog:
> 
>     http://www.alden.com/foscat.txt
> 
> but it was first published ~ 10 years ago, and it has not been kept up to 
> date.  An
> up-to-date
> version of that would be almost the ideal document.
> 
> If anyone knows of an up-to-date such document be sure to let John, me and 
> the rest
> of the community know.
> 
> Peter Neilley, NCAR/RAP
> address@hidden
> 303-497-8446
>