20040510: AWS data

Mark/Matthew-

> Hi!  Good question.  I have no idea....I need to learn more about 
> IDV...and I just haven't had the time.  The key is that IDV need to 
> embrace the OUTLANT map file in McIDAS to deal with the poor map 
> outlines in the default mapping - McIDAS suffers the same problem, but 
> yes, it does have this much better outline.  I've CC'ed some key players 
> here so they are aware of the problem, and can look into it more.
>
> Thanks so much!
>
> Matthew
>
>
> Mark Seefeldt wrote:
>
> > Matt,
> >
> > I was noticing in IDV that the "World Coastlines" map for Antarctica 
> > is awful. No problem, as the "World Country Outlines" map is good.  
> > Except for two things:
> >   1 - there is horribly large straight line that extends off of the 
> > Transantarctic mountains
> >   2 - the ice shelves are not indicated, which is really a valuable 
> > reference
> >
> > Do you know of any nice method of informing the IDV community to make 
> > these corrections.  I've always liked the Hi-Res Antarctic map for 
> > McIDAS.

Good question and I have two answers:

1) This can be done with the current IDV (1.1 beta3) although
it's not too straightforward (or documented)

2) We recently revamped the map control in the IDV to make it
easier to do what you want.

Here are the details for 1)

- In your home directory (e.g., /home/mattl on a Unix system,
c:/Documents And Settings/mattl on windows), there is a
.metapps directory under which IDV defaults are set.

- If you are using the default IDV, the files are stored in
.metapps/DefaultIdv.

- In this directory, there is an idv.rbi template (RBI stands for
Resource Bundle for the IDV) which can be modified to add new
resources for the IDV.

- What you need to do is create a new map specification file
(mymaps.xml) and then modify idv.rbi to point to that new file.

   - For the map specification, create a new file named mymaps.xml
     in your .metapps/DefaultIdv directory which would look something
     like (I've also attached a copy to this message):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<maps>

  <map
       source="file:///c:/data/gis/OUTLANT"
       description="Antarctic Coastlines"
       visible="true"
       color="yellow"
       linewidth="1.0"
       linestyle="0"
       />

</maps>

    You can have multiple map specifications in a file (map tags) and for
    each map, you need to specify the source of the file, a name,
    whether or not it is visible by default, a color, a line width
    (pixels) and a line style (0 = solid lines).

    At this time, the source needs to be specified as a URL.  I just
    found this bug while answering, so if you use a file, you need to
    use the file:/// specification as above.  Or you can specify
    a web URL like "http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~tomw/idv/OUTLANT";.

    Save this file, then edit the idv.rbi file and change the lines:

<!-- Where the maps are -->
  <resources name="application.resource.maps">
        <!-- <resource location="..."/> -->
  </resources>

to:

<!-- Where the maps are -->
  <resources name="application.resource.maps">
        <resource location="%USERPATH%/mymaps.xml"/>
  </resources>

%USERPATH% is the .metapps/DefaultIdv location.

Save the idv.rbi file and when you next start the IDV, you should
have the Antarctic Map in yellow on your display.  From that point,
you can use the Map Widget preference editor to change the default
color, linestyle and width if you want.

If you have any questions about this, please let me know.

For the next release, you will be able to use the Map Control
to add and customize maps.

Just a note on Tom W's response about just adding the specification
in to maps.xml in the USERDIR directory.  This will work in 1.1b3
only if you have saved your map preferences from the Edit->Resources->
User Preferences->Default Maps panel.  Until you do this, you will
not have a maps.xml in your USERDIR directory.

Don Murray
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<maps>

  <map
       source="file:///c:/data/gis/OUTLANT"
       description="Antarctic Coastlines"
       visible="true"
       color="yellow"
       linewidth="1.0"
       linestyle="0"
       />

</maps>