20041117:IDV startup

Hi Kevin,

> We experienced an interesting problem today. When we attempted to start IDV, it would 
> hang at the point where it is initializing resources. At this time, we also noted
> that we could not access the Unidata web site. I believe that IDV needs to 
> connect to the
> Unidata site to obtain some necessary resources, right?
That is correct. With the 1.1 release the idv reads in a listing of a 
set of favorite bundles  (The
Displays->Favorites->Eta211 and Ocean ones) from an xml file on the web 
site:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/content/software/IDV/current/resources/bundles.xml

I too noticed a network problem this morning working from home.

> Is there a way to start IDV if the Unidata site is down for an extended period 
> or if we lose our
> internet connection but are only interested in examining local data?
Right now there is no easy way to do this.  That would make a good 
command line argument to turn off accessing resources from remote sites.

One way to do this would be to overwrite the RBI file (which defines 
where resources are found) to
tell it to not load in the bundles.xml file. To do this look in your 
.metapps/DefaultIdv directory. There should be an idv.rbi file in there.
If there is  an entry that looks like this:

 <resources name="application.resource.bundlexml">
 </resources>

Then replace it with the following. If there is not one then just add 
the following inside the resourcebundle tags:

 <resources name="application.resource.bundlexml" loadmore="false">
   <resource location="%USERPATH%/bundles.xml"/>
   <resource location="%SITEPATH%/bundles.xml"/>
   <resource location="%IDVPATH%/bundles.xml"/>
 </resources>

The loadmore="false" tells the idv to not look in the system RBI file to 
find other bundlexml resources.
FYI- The USERPATH macro gets replaced with the user's local directory: 
~/.metapps/DefaultIdv
The SITEPATH gets replaced with the sitepath (specified from the command 
line or in the user preferences)
The IDVPATH is the system path that is included in the IDV jar file


> Other minor issues and questions:
>
> -When displaying the radar data, the color scale and time overlap in the 
> display window.
The color scale is still in its early stages of development. It is on 
our near-term todo list to make it better. I will make sure this problem
of overlapping with the time label is noted.

> -If the color scale is displayed after zooming in, changing the perspective, 
> etc., the color scale will not always display correctly (usually very small or 
> may not appear at all).
Ditto.

> - Is there an way to change the font size of stations ids and names or are they 
> "hard wired" to the zoom level?
There is a way. Bring up the station model editor 
(Edit->Resources->Station Model). Go to the station model you are 
interested (From the 'Station Models' menu).
Right click on the graphic that represents the station id and select 
'Properties'. From this dialog you can change the font size. Save the
station model (With File->Save).
Note: In the 1.1 release there is a bug that will probably cause the 
font size change to not take effect while the IDV is running. If you 
don't see it take effect try shutting
down and restarting the IDV. This is fixed in the 1.1 release.

> - Will IDV display 10-bit satellite AREA files? It only seems to work with 
> 8-bit, but I thought I might be missing something.
>
>  

I'm not sure about this. I will forward this to  Don Murray (who is out 
of town today) to get more information.

-Jeff