20001128: IMGREMAP: MAG= vs RES= (cont.)

>From: Jason Allard <address@hidden>
>Organization: PSU
>Keywords: 200010240345.e9O3jC425238 McIDAS-X IMGREMAP MAG RES

Jason,

>I've left what I did to get the images in a format that I thought the new
>command needed... my discussion, however, starts below all that around where
>the error message was discussed.

>Basically, the NACOMP command is determining whether or not there are
>cumulus clouds on the images by looking at the VIS and IR images and
>using thresholds for the detection of cumulus clouds.

OK.

re: second positional parameter is most likely not what you think

>That thought crossed my mind, but it appears that the command asks for:
>
>NACOMP APPEND visarea irarea outarea <keywords>

This one line help tells me that NACOMP is _not_ an ADDE application.
'visarea', 'irarea', and 'outarea' look to me to be AREA file numbers.
Your command invocation, therefore, will have to change to use the
actual AREA numbers instead of ADDE dataset group/descriptor.position
designation for a dataset element.  A quick look at the source code you
included my hunch confirms this.

So, what I am saying is that:

IF, for example:

o BWFSUB/071691VIS.1 is actually the file AREA3000
o BWFSUB/071691IR.1  is actually the file AREA4000
o BWFNAC/071691.1    is actually the file AREA5000

then your NACOMP command line would look like:

NACOMP APPEND 3000 4000 5000 VIS=150 175  IR=275 190

not

NACOMP APPEND BWFSUB/071691VIS.1 BWFSUB/071691IR.1 BWFNAC/071691.1 VIS=150 175  
 IR=275 190

>There is very little help for the command (a page of it at the
>beginning of the code).

I think that there is enough, however.

>Also, the command was written around 1992, so
>I realize there could be some problems associated with that...

Yup.  ADDE did not exist in 1992!

>do you know of any changes in mcidas over the past few years that would
>account for this?

See above.  The other potential thing to worry about is the format of
the date in the AREA files themselves.  I _think_ that this is not a
problem _if_ the code was written to judiciously use the McIDAS library
and not "roll its own".

re: The error message will be generated by a library routine, not by your
code

>That makes sense... and it would explain why I didn't see the error
>message in the code.

Right.

>It's times like these that I wish I had spent more time learning code
>than simply using 'basic programming' for the Atari 2600.  From what I
>can tell, it's fortran code, but I can't figure out much more than
>that.

The code you sent along indicates that it is indeed Fortran.

>I understand basically what it's suppose to do, and the logic
>behind it.  It looks at both the VIS and IR images for a specified day
>and time.  It calculated the albedo from the VIS brightness temps
>(that's the main reason I wanted the program).  And then, depending
>upon the user specifed VIS and IR thresholds, it'll determine whether
>or not cumulus clouds are present.  It'll record the presence of
>cumulus with another part of the new command, you can determine the
>percentages of the data meeting the specified thresholds.

Interesting.

>I'm going to attach the program.  I really didn't want to do that,
>because I'm sure it's way beyond your duties to bother looking at it.
>So, don't hesitate to let me know that you really don't have the time
>to look at it.  Mainly, I'm just trying to see what help you can give
>me concerning mcidas, and then I'll take that and try to see how it
>relates to the new command.

Well, I really don't have time to look at the code in any detail right
now.  I did scan through it, however, and verified that it expects to
be passed AREA file numbers for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th positional
parameters.  It seems to me that if you know the input VIS and IR 
and output AREA file numbers, then you are still good to go.

>There are two attached files, one is a modified version, nacomp.pgm...
>the modifications were done so that it would build... the ^M were
>removed at the end of the lines and a # symbol was removed from line
>288 (from the DATA line).  For some reason it wouldn't build with the #
>symbol.  I've also attached the original file that I obtained.  It's
>called nacomp.pgm.orig.

I think that you might have inadvertantly changed how the program works
by simply removing the '#' character from the DATA IB1 line:

original:

      DATA IB1/#0102/, IB2/0/

modified:

      DATA IB1/0102/, IB2/0/


We can't fingure out what #0102 is supposed to be, but it might be
an old hexidecimal format.  It might be OK, but I can't say for sure.

>Once again, thanks for any help you can give.

>From address@hidden Tue Nov 28 14:14:47 2000
>To: address@hidden

>I should have mentioned in the last e-mail, that the only support for the
>command that I have is the comments at the beginning of the code.

Right, I understood that to be the case.

>The people that I obtained it from were 'users' and don't know much about
>it.

Too bad.

>In addition,
>it took me three months for them to give me the code.

I wonder why it took so long?

>Basically, they're not going to be of much help.  I haven't contacted the
>actual people who wrote it (their names are in the comments).

I see that this code was written at SSEC by Dave Santek and Ken Bywaters.
Dave is still at SSEC, but Ken has moved on.

Tom