[McIDAS #RDQ-637778]: Re: New Questions Regarding My Research

Hi Rod,

re:
> Can you describe more about this?
> 
> "SATANGLES does not have an option to write its output to ASCII text
> files,but information for individual pixels can be written to ASCII
> text files by specifying the DEV=T <fname> keyword sequence in
> SATANGLES invocations."

By default, textual output from McIDAS commands is sent to standard
out... users see the output as comments made by the commands in
the McIDAS Text and Comamnd window (if one is running in a full
McIDAS session), or in the terminal window if McIDAS commands are
run from the Linux terminal.

One can tell McIDAS commands to write the output to two different
kinds of files: LW and ASCII text.  LW files are a McIDAS invention
that are mostly textual, but each line is 80 characters in length
but they don't have the normal end of line characters that ASCII
text files have.  One tells the McIDAS command how and where to
write its textual output using the DEV= keyword.  DEV= is a global
keyword meaning that it is a valid keyword for all McIDAS commands.
The full listing of McIDAS global keywords and their syntax is
found in Appendix A of the the McIDAS-X Users Guide:

Unidata HomePage
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu

  Software -> McIDAS
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/

    Documentation and Training
    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/#documentation

      McIDAS user's guide
      http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/current/users_guide/toc.html

Again, global keywords are covered in Appendix A.

Textual output from McIDAS commands can be saved in LW files using the
'DEV=F fname' syntax; output can be saved into an ASCII text file using
the 'DEV=T fname' syntax. Since you want to save the output from SATANGLES
into ASCII files, you will be using the 'DEV=T fname' form of the keyword.

In 'DEV=T fname' the 'T' says to write the output as plain ASCII text
and 'fname' is the name of the file to write the output in.  Since
one most typically runs McIDAS commands from one's McIDAS working directory
(specified as the location defined in the environment variable MCDATA),
'fname' is typically written/found in $MCDATA (which is /home/rod/mcidas/data
in your case).

To illustrate how to run SATANGLES do the following:

1) use IMGDISP to display any one of the images you are working
   with (i.e., effective radius image, or vis image, or IR image)
   from a full McIDAS session

   Example, from the McIDAS Text and Command window, run:

ERASE
IMGDISP G13/IR27APR11 TIME=19:55 LAT=30:00 86:30

2) next, move your mouse cursor to some place in of interest
   in the image

3) interrogate the image by running the IMGPROBE command:

IMGPROBE MODE=N

   This will list out a number of pieces of information about
   the image pixel that the mouse cursor is over (e.g., dataset
   name, date and time of the image, lat, lon, and values of
   the pixel, etc.

4) without moving the mouse cursor, run the SATANGLES command

SATANGLES

   SATANGLES lists out some of the same information as IMGPROBE
   and more

The output from both 'IMGPROBE MODE=N' and 'SATANGLES' are both
textual in nature.  To save the output in an ASCII text file, run
SATANGLES including the DEV=T keyword sequence:

SATANGLES DEV=T angles.out

This invocation will create the ASCII text file 'angles.out'
in your McIDAS working directory, /home/rod/mcidas/data.  You
can list out the contents of this file from withing McIDAS
using:

SEE angles.out

and/or you can list out the content of 'angles.out' using the
Linux 'cat' command:

cat /home/rod/mcidas/data/angles.out

If you move your mouse cursor and rerun 'SATANGLES DEV=T angles.out',
angles.out will be recreated with the new output.  If you want to
append new information to the same file, you would use 'DEV=T angles.out A'
instead of 'DEV=T angles.out'.

Try the following:

- move the mouse cursor to an area of interest in the displayed
  image

  Run:

SATANGLES DEV=T angles.out

  This creates a new 'angles.out' file.

- move the cursor to another area of interest and run:

SATANGLES DEV=T angles.out A

- list the contents of 'angles.out' form the Linux command
  line:

cd /home/rod/mcidas/data
cat angles.out

- you can continue to append information to 'angles.out' by
  moving your cursor around and then running

SATANGLES DEV=T angles.out A

My comment about using SATANGLES is that one can use it to
check the extreme Lat and Lon locations for your areas of
interest to determine if the solar zenith angle is acceptable.
Of course, this is not as easy as being able to run a program
that lists the values for a region, but it is usable nonetheless.

There is one thing to be mindful of:  SATANGLES only works
for certain kinds of navigation.  Here is its HELP:

HELP SATANGLES
 SATANGLES -- Lists satellite zenith, solar zenith, and relative angles at 
cursor location
     SATANGLES
 Remark:
     Works for GOES, GVAR and GMS Navigation

     This is a renamed copy of a McIDAS-XRD 2007 routine called ANGLES.
     Renaming was needed since there is a subroutine in the McIDAS
     distribution called angles.for.
 ----------

The thing I am warning you about is that it works for GOES, GVAR and
GMS navigation.  It does NOT work for the rectilinear navigation
of the images that your EFFRAD4.BAT BATCH file is creating by
running IMGREMAP.  This means that if you want to use SATANGLES,
you have to use it with the original VIS, IR and effective
radius images; you will not be able to use it with the images
AREA3000 and AREA3100 that are created by IMGREMAP (try it,
and you see what I mean).

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: RDQ-637778
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed