20010820: McIDAS: map overlays bar and refresh problems (cont.)

>From: Christian Page <address@hidden>
>Organization: Universite du Quebec a Montreal
>Keywords: 200108161336.f7GDaa129316 McIDAS scripts

Christian,

>Thanks for the help.
>
>I did include McIDAS env variables correctly.

OK.  I just wanted to make sure of this.

>About my first question, I think I asked it the wrong way. I have a colortable
>defined as (enhancement table called XREC.ET):
> Brightness  Blue      Green      Red
>  min max   min max   min max   min max
>  --- ---   --- ---   --- ---   --- ---
>    0  38     0   0     0   0   127 254
>   39 102     0   0     3 255   255 255
>  103 165     4 251   255 255   251   3
>  217 255   254 127     0   0     0   0
>
>I want all of these colors to be available to draw my satellite image.
>But, for my color legend labels, geography outline and frame label, I want to
>use black and white. Since I don't have black and white in my ET, and that I
>use all 256 levels of brightness already for my sat image, how can I have
>access to black and white? Is it possible or do I have to replace 2 of my
>colors in my ET by black and white to have access to them?

If I understand you correctly, it seems to me that most of what you
want to do in terms of annotation on top of your image display can be
done using graphics, and the good news here is that graphics colors are
totally separate from image enhancement colors.  Since graphic colors
are separate from image enhancement colors, you could create your own
graphic palette that uses the colors you want and your job would be
finished (you would have to restore your graphic palette to the frame
in order to use your set of colors, of course).  To learn more about
setting graphic palette colors and saving and restoring graphic tables,
please review the online or User Guide helps for the GU command.

The color legend labels (the labels on BAR displays) and geography
outline (map on top of image) are definitely drawn using graphic
colors, not enhancement colors.  The frame label, on the other hand,
could be done using FRMLABEL which uses enhancement colors since it is
done in the image plane, or it could be done using the ZA command which
would put up annotations using graphic colors.

If you want to use FRMLABEL to create a label for your image, then you
will have to adjust your enhancement since it uses enhancement colors;
there is no way around this.  The reason one might use FRMLABEL instead
of ZA for annotating displays is FRMLABEL supports the notion of
placeholders whose values symbolically represent values available from
the image as displayed:

FRMLABEL - Displays an image label on a frame
   FRMLABEL <keywords> "text
Parameters:
   "text | text to write to image frame; all text is displayed
           in uppercase; maximum of 250 characters; the following
           placeholders can be specified for text substitution:
           (BAND) - band number of displayed image (nn)
           (DATASET) - ADDE dataset name of displayed image (24 char max)
           (DAY) - day of displayed image (dd mon yy)
           (ERES) - element resolution of displayed image (nn.nn)
           (FRAME) - frame number of display (nnn)
           (HH) - time of displayed image (hh)
           (HHMM) - time of displayed image (hh:mm)
           (HHMMSS) - time of displayed image (hh:mm:ss)
           (ID) - NEXRAD station ID of displayed image (3 char)
           (JDAY) - Julian day of displayed image (yyddd)
           (LRES) - line resolution of displayed image (nn.nn)
           (MEMO) - memo field of displayed image (32 char max)
           (POS) - ADDE dataset position of displayed image (nnnn)
           (RES) - resolution of image as displayed on frame (nn.nn)
           (SS) - sensor source number of displayed image (nnn)
           (STYPE) - image type of displayed image (12 char max)
           (TIME) - time of displayed image (hhmmss)

ZA, on the other hand, does not support the placeholder notion.  You have
to specify exactly what you want to write:

ZA -- Place annotation on graphics frame at cursor position
  ZA color height justify <keywords> "text
Parameters:
  color | graphics color level; 0 for erase (def=1)
  height | pixel height to draw text/symbols (def=10 for text; cursor
           height for TCYC= symbol)
  justify | L=left, R=right, C=center, V=vertical, M=mouse
            N=numerous (def=L)
  "text | text to write on the graphics frame
  "$text | displays weather symbols or arrows on the graphics frame; see
           the McIDAS Users Guide for valid choices


FRMLABEL is a lot more flexible in certain ways, but ZA allows one to
plot weather symbols.  You should review the FRMLABEL and ZA sections
of the User's Guide for a more complete picture of how each of these
commands could be effectively used.

>About my second question regarding the map overlaying the bar, thank you for
>help, it works well!
>
>About my third question, regarding wait.k, it does work well also! Thanks...

Excellent.  How long wait.k waits can be adjusted by providing it with
a positional parameter whose value is the number of seconds to wait.
The default wait period is 5 seconds, and this may be somewhat
excessive for what you are trying to accomplish.

>I have a new question. I use ADDE access to display RTGINI/GE4KIR and
>RTGINI/GE1KVIS images. Are these the highest time and horizontal resolution
>goes-8 images available through ADDE?

Yes, these are the hightest temporal resolution of NOAAPORT GINI imagery.

>They seems to have the highest horizontal
>resolution, but as far as time resolution is concerned, they seem to be
>available only at :15 and :45, am I right?

The GOES-East GINI sectors are nominally scanned at 15 and 45 minutes
past the hour.  GOES-West sectors are nominally scanned at 0 and 30 past
the hour.

>Is there 15 min. temporal resolution goes-8 on ADDE?

No, but the GOES scanning will increase in temporal frequence as new
satellites go into service.

>Also, I want to generate these images as soon as they are available. Is there 
>a neat way to do this in McIDAS, or must I guess the tiem availability (I
>assume it as at :00 and :30)?

The problem here is that the images are sitting off on a server that is
receiving them from some sort of transport mechanism.  Some of the
servers might be getting the images off of a satellite downlink; others
may be getting them off an IDD feed which in turn came from a satellite
downlink.  On systems getting the data through the IDD, one could setup
a pqact.conf action that would kick off an automated processing job
upon receipt of the image.  ADDE, however, is a "pull" technology: you
are making requests of the server when you run a command.  There is no
mechanism for telling the server to send you a display when a new
product is first available.  You could setup a polling for the new
image, but that would be a little wasteful of the CPU cycles on both
your own and the server machines.  My best advice would be to keep track
of when the server you are accessing typically get new set of images
and then setup your display job based on those times.

Tom