RELEASE: Digital Atmosphere Workstation V1.0e patch

[Tim Vasquez]

Here is tonight's patch:
http://216.71.158.243/dl/dapatch.exe (3.7 MB)

This 1.0e patch solves:
- Map > Erase, white "square" on workchart, and startup map bugs have been fixed. A programming change last week somehow disabled the background image from being updated when a map was loaded from disk.
- Cressman, Barnes, and Weighted analyses now no longer leave holes. The gridpoints outside of user-defined range limits was not being mathematically expanded, so the fields were peppered with missing data. This is fixed now. The fields will be noisy (SLP will produce lots of lows and highs for example), so be aware you may have to run a smoothing pass on the output.
- Highs/lows are now supported. Please see the Help Appendix under Graphics Scripting for more information. It supports three sets of max/min features with the scripting language. I have revised the digatmos.mnu Analysis Menu file to add this to the SLP and ALSTG analyses.
- Stamp producing error. This is repaired. It also now gets its font settings from the new style tables.
- NEXRAD color overrides and source overrides have been moved to File > Preferences > General where they can be saved as defaults. Take a look -- you can use the Weathertap or WSR-88D PUP palette if you like!
- A choice in the Radar > Select Stations map is now reflected in the Radar dropdown menu. Up to now, only a choice in Radar > Quick pick was reflected.
- Altimeter setting showing tens/units only has been fixed. It is now treated as a special field and multiplied by 1000 for labelling purposes.
- Preferences on English and Celsius units have been refined to show that they only apply to station plots. The analysis scripting language has its own conversion operators that will let you define your own fields in whatever units you like, and will be expanded further.
- Problems downloading front bulletins have been fixed; the cause was an older interfering module trying to look for the latest file on its own if "front" was found in the URL. This module has been disabled. To use the new change you must install the new style file, which has a %1 in front of the URL to tell it to hunt down the latest file on the server.
- Style files are updated, adding items such as cus for custom fields, fixes for the convective outlook font which was accidentally shifted left of its column in the last release, and tdc, tdv for Television plots.
- NEXRAD VCP 12 is now recognized. It will display the correct elevations at different scan elevations.
- Radar storm total graphics not scaled properly. Digital Atmosphere now reads the scaling flag from the NIDS data. The precipitation total products I tried now plot correctly.
- Time zone issues. A couple of users reported the UTC time being stuck the same as LST on Digital Atmosphere. I could not find any apparent source of error and nothing was changed. If you still see this problem go to File > Preferences > Misc and hit the Time button and copy the entire contents & send to me. More diagnostic indicators have been added to this to help identify any lingering problems.

Being worked on:
- Fixing the multiple document interface. I have brought in another programmer on this. It should be fixed soon. Ultimately I plan to have it where the cursor can appear on different screens showing the same geographic location -- great for radar interrogation.
- Implementing the different map styles so that they're actually different. It's more trouble to do this now than later since the style files are changing a little with every patch.
- Shapefile issues. Haven't gotten to that.
- Error in Inflate on radar products. I have contracted out to have specialized work done on this sporadic problem. It may be fixed within several days. This is only an issue for sources providing compressed NIDS data, such as COD.
- PDF help manual online will be fixed. This was printed through PDFWriter rather than Distiller, and I know PDFWriter has problems. I can't get my help writer to communicate with Distiller though, so this issue will have to wait.
- GRIB support. I know this is incompatible with some GRIb files. This is important but it's kind of an exotic feature so I have postponed patching this until the basic stuff is fixed.
- IO Error 32 issues on radar or downloads. I haven't seen this happen here, and haven't received enough specific information to work on it. However since it is a file sharing violation it may just be a symptom of another error that got triggered, leaving a file unclosed. In that respect it is being solved as the other errors come under control. If you see repeated Error 32's even after restarting DA, send detailed info plus version # so I can reproduce the error here. It would also be extremely important to know whether other errors occurred before this error (but not before you started DA).
- Other items. I've read all E-mails and messages and have taken notes, so if I haven't responded it doesn't mean I haven't considered your request.

Null issues:
- Fonts don't change. They do. You need to edit the style file in File > Preferences > Styles and carefully type in the font name you want to use. If they don't change, the name is probably not entered accurately and a matching font can't be found. A dropdown menu may be added in a future patch.
- RCM does not work. RCM has never worked reliably in Digital Atmosphere due to inconsistencies in the binary file structure from different sources. RCM is not currently supported as the demand for Level III support is overwhelming. When other issues are completed I may resume work on the RCM decoding.
- Radar is too dark. This is caused by having dark basemaps. Either use brighter basemaps or brighter radar colors. The latter can be done by using the color dropdown in Preferences > General or brightening your radar color palette (create a different scheme in digatmos.nex). Variable translucency is definitely a good idea but can't be worked on now.

Tim

[Alessandro Mandelli]

Patch 1.0e trashed DAWS installation.
I had to remove patch and package and reinstall from scratch
Just testing now, and I got an access violation error.

More reports to come.