20001127: Test NIDS products for ARX (cont.)

>From: Harry Edmon <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Washington
>Keywords: 200011272038.eARKcco20055 NOAAPORT compressed NIDS example products

Harry,

Yesterday, you asked:

>Is there anyway to get samples to test decoders?

I have put sets of zlib-compressed NOAAPORT NIDS products out in
subdirectories (N0R, N0V, NCR, NTP) of pub/nids-test of anonymous FTP
on our FTP server ftp.unidata.ucar.edu for you to grab.  The
zlib-compressed files are what we are sending from our NOAAPORT ingest
system to our office for testing.  Chiz and I were chatting about
whether any changes need to be made to the structure of these files,
but I think that the strucutre will stay as they are now.

Just to let you know, Chiz has added access to the zlib-compressed
NIDS products in GEMAPK/GARP/NMAP, and I am in the middle of adding
the same to McIDAS-X.

In addition, I will be releasing an ldm-mcidas "decoder" that will
allow sites to file uncompressed products in a hierarchical directory
structure (much like pnga2area).  My aim is to make the NIDS products
look exactly like those now coming from WSI, so sites long term
archives will not undergo any abrupt file change (this is trivial since
the only change is the movement of the station ID from the front of the
file in the WMO header to the end of the file in a trailing 4-byte
sequence).  I expect to be able to offer the next ldm-mcidas release
by mid December.

Tom