19990423: running PC and ZA in script outside of a McIDAS session

>From: weather <address@hidden>
>Organization: NMSU/NSBF
>Keywords: 199904230345.VAA06168 McIDAS scripts

Robert,

>I have been successful at producing a cgi script that will let you input
>various choices and produce model images on the fly(for Alaska in this case).

Cool.

>It works fine, except I wanted to add the capability of placing a cursor
>and marking it with text, because I would like to be able to do this with
>balloon positions (i.e. pc.k E 31:47 95:32  za.k 5 7 C "bal").  I know
>the first " is necessary for ZA, anf the shell is expecting the closing ".
>I can live with the extra ".

Actually, what you should do is to escape the quote.  Try:

pc.k E 31:47 95:32
za.k 5 7 C \"bal

Escaping the quote will allow it to be passed to the command being
executed.  Closing the quote will stop the shell from complaining, but
it will not do what you desire.

>I cannot get the text to be written to the image.  Here is the meat of the
>script below(without the McIDAS environment stuff). When I run this same
>script as a standard Bourne shell script with values for each variable,
>the LAT/LON is shown correctly for PAFB in the text output and I get
>za.k DONE, but there is nothing on the image other than the map and
>contours.

The reason you get no annotation is that the effective command that
is being run is:

za.k 5 7 C 

The annotation field is blank, so nothing gets written.  It is
unfortunate that ZA does not warn you that you havn't entered text to
be used in the annotation, but that is what is going on.


>I am sure I just don't 
>understand how McIDAS or X-window behaves outside of the McIDAS session,
>but is there anyway to get this to work?

Try escaping the quote and removing the trailing quote.

>(Try not to laugh at my primitive shell programming attempts).

I never would.  You should see some of my beginning (and current) attempts
at writing shell scripts :-(

>You can run the script at:
>http://wxmcidas.nsbf.nasa.gov/akmod.html( I have removed the redirect for
>the text output)

Please let me know if escaping the quote wasn't all that was needed in
your script.

>DATE=`date +%Y%j`
>export DATE
>if [ $WWW_dat = date ]
>then
>   DAT=$DATE
>else
>  if [ $WWW_dat = dat1 ]
>  then
>     DAT=`expr $DATE - 1`
>  fi
>fi
>export DAT
>case "$WWW_prm" in
>      P) TIMES=0
>         export TIMES;;
>      Z) TIMES=0
>         export TIMES;;
>      T) TIMES=0
>         export TIMES
>         UNIT=C
>         export UNIT;;
>     RH) TIMES=0
>         export TIMES;;
>  WINDB) TIMES=0
>         export TIMES
>         UNIT=KT
>         export UNIT;;
>    PCP) TIMES=0
>         export TIMES;;
>      W) TIMES=1
>         export TIMES;
>esac
>case "$WWW_drv" in
>    SPD) TIMES=0
>         export TIMES
>         UNIT=KT
>         export UNIT;;
>    VOR) TIMES=5
>         export TIMES;
>esac
>
>MCPATH=$MCPATH PATH=$PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH mcenv << 'EOF' 
>2>/dev /null 1>&2
>rm /var/http/demo/public/images/mod*.gif
>grddisp.k RTGRIDS/$WWW_sat TIME=$WWW_mot PARAM=$WWW_prm DERIVE=$WWW_drv 
>LEV=$WWW_lev TDA=CAL CINT=$WWW_int DAY=$DAT FHOUR=$WWW_tim DASH=NEG 
>POWER=$TIMES UNIT=$UNIT
>pc.k L PAFB
>za.k 5 7 C "PAFB"
>svgif.k 1 
>/var/http/demo/public/images/mod$WWW_sat$WWW_mot$WWW_prm$WWW_drv$UNIT$WWW_lev$WWW_int$WWW_tim.gif
>
>EOF
>/var/http/demo/cgi-bin/testmod
>
># Done

If you were putting up satellite imagery, I would recommend that you
give the mcenv invocation a '-i n' flag so the imagery could have more
('n' number) than the default 48 colors.  Other than that, I believe
that if you simply change

za.k 5 7 C "PAFB"

to 

za.k 5 7 C \"PAFB

you should be all set.

I am looking at your other inquiry and will respond when I have something
to report.

Tom

>From address@hidden  Sun Apr 25 17:59:02 1999

Thanks Tom,

It works now!  Thanks for the tip on satellite imagery.  I wondered
why my images did not look as sharp as they should.  
My problem with doing satellite loops for Alaska of course is the
fact that it is at the top of the image.  I toyed with the idea
of remapping all of the AREA files as they came in, but I decided
I was too low on disk space to do that and everything else I wanted
to do.  So I decided to remap the images on request and build 
the loop.  The ability to do RTIMAGES/GW-IR, GW-IR.-1, -2, etc
is handy.  It takes a little while to generate, but it is not too
bad(should be faster on psnldm).  Now I can add the capability of placing 
balloon position on the image via user input.  That is pretty amazing.