AWIPS Build 4.0 D2D software release notes

New user interface

• The menu and tool bars extend all the way across the display. While this slightly reduces the size of the monitor panes, it accommodates pane resizing. The tool bar can be removed to make the display windows larger (toggle the Tool Bar button in the View menu); all tool bar functions are replicated in the menus.
• Panes can be resized by dragging on their borders. There is a limit as to how far you can drag to the right (about 40% of the width), so the main pane is always the largest. If you drag a horizontal border to the bottom of the display, you can nearly eliminate one or two of the monitor panes, effectively yielding a two- or three-paned layout. Icon buttons for the default layout and a preset 3-pane layout are available on the menu.
• Icons are used for most tool bar commands. If you put the pointer over an icon, a help string will appear in a couple of seconds to remind you of the button's function.
• The history list is now directly on the File menu, no longer hidden in the Procedures cascade menu.
• A Print icon is used for default printing. Printing options are still on the File>Print... menu.
• Section headings in menus are in a contrasting color, to ease menu navigation.
• Changing scales is much faster than in Build 3. Also, you get menu control almost immediately after a Clear. No more waiting for invisible things to happen!
• Time-resolution loading is now available from the Options menu, not as one of the load modes. If data inventories support it, you can use time-resolution load along with any of the load modes.
• Keyboard accelerators have been added for several functions. The list includes:

  Menu Functions			Display Functions
  Key	Function		Key	Function
  Ctrl+n	new procedure		left arrow	step back
  Ctrl+o	open procedure		right arrow	step forward
  Ctrl+d	delete procedure		Ctrl+left	first frame
  Ctrl+h	history		Ctrl+right	last frame
  Ctrl+p	print w/options		up arrow	loop faster (turn on if not)
  alt-F4	exit/ close dialog		down arrow	loop slower (turn on)
  Ctrl+c	clear		Keypad 0	toggle image
  Ctrl+l	loop properties		Keypad 1-9	toggle overlays 1-9
  Ctrl+i	image properties		shift-Keypad 0-9	toggle overlays 10-19
  F12	where's that cursor? (the "Martha" button)		Keypad .	image 1/2 toggle
  Insert	toggle image combo		Keypad +/-	image fade
  			Keypad Enter	3-way legends toggle: 1. standard 2. time only 3. maps

  Note: In order for these accelerators to be used, the display window (or any properties dialog) must have focus. That is, its border must be colored. Tear-away menus are not included; you can use the arrow keys in those to navigate through the menus - the right arrow opens cascades. If your pointer is over an application menu (e.g., the Volume Browser), you also can't use the keyboard accelerators. (This same point applies to the text window that you can use on the graphics screen; you can't type commands there unless it has the colored border indicating focus.)

Other new features

• You can now delete user-created color tables. To do so, display the table you wish to remove, then select Delete... from the Image Colors Editor application's dialog.
• The startup process has been changed. Now, the large pane comes up first, before the monitor panes are started. Once the map is visible on the large pane, you can load products, without waiting for the monitor panes to display. This lets you view data within about a minute of starting.
• If an IGC (display process) crashes, it will restart automatically. This eliminates occurrences of a black, unusable, monitor pane, and should greatly reduce the number of restarts required. If a restart occurs, you'll get a red-box message so indicating. A new item on the Options menu allows you to restart any display panes that have died.
• A new fixed buoy plot is added to the Surface menu.
• A wind chill/heat index plot is also added to the Surface menu. Wind chill is displayed for stations whose temperature is below 60F, and heat index for the others.
• There are six new pop-up menu features, in three classes:
  1. You can change the panel layout between single and four panel. When you enter 4-panel mode, the products currently displayed are put in the upper-left panel. When exiting 4-panel mode, the products in the panel over which you popped up the menu will be loaded into the single panel.
  2. Multiple unloads (applies to small and large panes):
     • Unload All Products - all products and user-loaded maps
     • Unload Graphics - all graphics products and user-loaded maps
     • Unload Extra Maps - all user-loaded maps
  3. In small panes, the pop-up now includes step forward, step backward, first frame, and last frame icons in a cascade menu.
  4. A lat/lon cursor readout is now available (any pane).
• You can select two fields in the Volume Browser and display their difference.
• The Volume Browser will now display a grid time series at a named point.
• Station name map backgrounds can show info when sampled. (The Denver spotters map is the first one so enabled.)
• A new storm summary graphic (tornadoes, large hail, severe gusts, each in its own overlay) is added to the Surface menu. Events are extracted from the STADTS and STAHRY products, and plotted to time-match the current display. (If displayed stand-alone, the entire contents of each STADTS/STAHRY version will plot in successive frames, thus producing a generally hourly plot.) Sampling this product yields descriptive text for the event.
• New Z/SRM menus are added to the radar menu.
• The 1 km composite reflectivity product on the main radar menu is now called simply "composite reflectivity," and now is a mosaic of 1 km and 4 km data (depending on range). The individual 1 km and 4 km products are still available on the "Derived" menu. A VIL/composite reflectivity product is also added to the main radar menu, where these are mosaiced in the same way as the 1 km/4 km composite reflectivity products.
• A new vrShear extension is available on the Tools menu. It lets you read gate-to-gate (or other point-to-point) radial velocity shear.
• New on the radar menu are buttons to load all tilts in successive frames, to provide a loop passing from low to high tilts. In conjunction with this, the 3.4/3.5 deg tilt products have been moved into the "Hi Z/V/tilts" cascade menu (to reduce the length of the main radar menu).
• A plot of coop precip reports (from STP/RR2 text) is now available.
• You can now interrogate cursor position information from skew-T backgrounds (both hodograph and temperature/pressure areas).
• Support for marine zones is added (map backgrounds and WarnGen).
• The root menu (button 3 pop-up whence you launch D2D) now includes an entry to start the LDAD interface.
• LAPS and MSAS are included in this build.
  MSAS is the MAPS surface analysis system, which does a 40 km CONUS-wide analysis, used for LDAD QC. The analysis grids are available in the volume browser, and on the Surface menu. (MSAS is essentially equivalent to the surface part of the RUC; eventually, hourly RUC surface grids should be disseminated to the field, supplanting the need for local MSAS runs.)
  LAPS stands for Local Analysis and Prediction System, though the prediction part awaits a future build (requiring more CPU horsepower than is currently available at WFOs). The LAPS analysis is on a 10 km grid, covering a somewhat-larger-than WFO area. These data are also available in the volume browser and on the Surface menu. More information on these is available at http://maps.fsl.noaa.gov and http://laps.fsl.noaa.gov, respectively.

Improvements

• Combined deep (multi-color) graphics no longer fade. You can still combine them (display two), but only one or the other will show.
• When a pop-up menu is active, background processing (loading frames "behind the scenes") is disabled. This improves the responsiveness of the pop-up. (Background processing is also less obtrusive than it used to be, so the mouse will be more responsive while the pie cursor is showing.)
• The storm-relative motion (SRM) product now includes the storm motion vector information plotted in the upper left corner.
• The choices on the one-time-request menus have been tweaked as necessary to conform to NEXRAD specs. Also, the OTR menu indicates in the window title whether the selected radar is accessed via dedicated or dial-in connection. The RPGs are now alphabetized in the list used here and in the RPS list application.
• The time interface in the one-time-request application has been simplified and improved.
• The product maker now can work with satellite images. It also is knowledgeable of the current display scale, and provides appropriate choices of model data.
• Tools and map backgrounds no longer carry inventory times on the menu.
• The CWA map now includes forecast office identifiers. A map of RFC areas is now available.
• When displaying map legends, the on/off state is more clearly reflected in the legend color. (Previously, "on" was dimmer than "off," which is counter-intuitive.)
• Grid items:
  • Precipitable water for Eta, mesoEta, and NGM are now available in the Volume Browser.
  • New mesoEta boundary layer products are added at 30, 90, 120 AGL. (Note that the first of these also appears on the Volume Browser menu as "BL" - either will work.(?))
  • Several additional fields are now available from the MRF. These include data at 1000, 850, 700, 300, and 250 hPa, convective precip, and wave-5 height. Also, the Northern Hemisphere and North American grid sets for MRF are now equivalent. 12-hour resolution now extends all the way to 240 hours.
  • Numerous additional AVN model fields are now available on the double-resolution grid. This will improve their displayed appearance. On the North American scale only, forecast projections for AVN now include 3, 9, 15, and 21 hours. Also on the NA scale, vertical velocity at 900, 950, and 1000 hPa are added to the menu (though data are not yet sent by NCEP for 900 and 950).
• Storm reports, watches and warnings, and other text-based plots now better match the data on which they're overlaid, in both fitting a valid window and plotting multiple valid items as needed.
• A new IR/water vapor combination product is now available, in which IR window data replace water vapor pixels where the cloud-top temperature is below -35C. A color table for this is added to the menu.
• Another new color table, for the fog product (11 - 3.9 micron), is also added to the color tables menu.
• WarnGen items:
  • WarnGen now includes buttons at the top to select an alternate county warning area, for site backup purposes.
  • When a watch is in effect, a banner to that effect is now available for warnings within the watch area.
  • WarnGen now allows you to select a line of storms, rather than just a single location. While you can have as many segments in the line as you wish, each will be mentioned in the text describing the extent of the line.
    Note that there is a bug in the initial set-up of the line feature. When the default line displays, with the "Drag me to storm" prompt, you must move the whole line (drag when the pointer is in the + shape) in order to get a track. If you drag any (or all) of the vertices, you'll get a box, but no track. (You can drag the whole line at any time to get your track.)
  • In WarnGen, you can toggle the (new default) display of county/zone hatching, and generate a new first-guess box (which is based on the storm track you've defined, and is the common trapezoid shape) at any time. You can also click on a county (or zone, depending on map background selection) to add it to or remove it from the warning area.
• The Interactive Skew-T application has been re-worked. You now start the program from the pop-up menu over the display (including from small panes, but not from 4-panel displays). An interactive version of the sounding overlays your display (click button 2 over the legend to activate it), and then you can select and drag points to modify the sounding.
• Boundaries for Canadian provinces and Mexican states are now included in the States map.
• When a red box message comes up, it is (optionally) accompanied by a sound. A selection of sounds is available from the Options menu.
• Sometimes, no matter how far you zoom, and even at full graphics density, some stations just don't show up, due to proximity to others. A new "Max" density setting is now available, to show everything.
• A new "zero" graphics magnification is now included. This will turn off all labels on contours (and will make station plots disappear except for a dot at the station).
• When you are working with an interactive-drawing polygon, and want to create a new vertex, the vertex will appear where you click, rather than always at the midpoint of the segment.

Bug fixes

• Graphics controls are now properly set with bundle loads.
• All weather symbols (SQ, at least, used to be wrong) now are correctly positioned on METAR plots.
• When you swap a blank frame into a small pane, it now properly shows no time label.
• Four-panel loads now work properly from history/procedures.
• Previously, if you hid the latest frame in a loop, then swapped, the pane would be blank until loop or step. Now fixed.
• There was a problem with a few infrequently-used grid products (items involving adding two fields together - e.g., MAPS precip). This has been fixed.
• Mapping of storm track and mesocyclone radar graphics was incorrect. It's now fixed.
• METAR precip plots are now correct. Previously, they often plotted amounts too high, due to an error in interpreting the precip code in the obs.
• Radar cross sections are back on the menu, as they now will display properly. The CFC product is also re-enabled.
• SRM cursor read-out for range folded areas now displays "RF" rather than ">50 kts".
• Previously, if you created a lot of color tables, the menu would eventually grow large enough that your new tables were off the bottom of the display, and thus inaccessible. Now, when the list of tables grows too large to fit the menu (more than 41 total tables), a cascade (pull-right) will be created to accommodate as many tables as needed.

Remaining bugs

• The default load mode (Valid Time Sequence or Latest Model Run) is restored after a swap, instead of whatever mode you had set when that information was in the large pane.
• 4-panel charts can't be printed. A dialog informs you of this sad fact.
• Once you're in 4-panel mode, you stay there until explicitly Clearing the screen. If you select products on a different scale, you'll get the same thing loaded in each panel.

New bugs

• While using the image colors editor, if you adjust the image brightness, your changes will be removed. Workaround: Don't! But if you do, clicking on Undo then Redo will restore your modified table (at whatever brightness you just set). (The same problem occurs if you swap while using the color editor.)
• As mentioned above, there is a bug in the initial set-up of the WarnGen line feature. When the default line displays, with "Drag me to storm" prompt, you must move the whole line (drag when the pointer is in the + shape) in order to get a track. If you drag any (or all) of the vertices, you'll get a box, but no track. (You can drag the whole line at any time to get your track.)
• The sample read-out for the WV/IR product shows "< -35" in areas that are actually warmer than -35C.
• Samples on skewT charts include a degree sign in front of K.
• Accelerators for image combination and loop toggle are not indicated on the menus.
• You can't individually magnify the VR shear overlay (from the pop-up menu). (It will magnify if you do a global magnification from the menu.)
• If you turn lat/lon readout on, then bring up a skewT and sample it, you'll get lat/lon info for the previously displayed map (in addition to the chart information that you want). The pop-up correctly does not include the lat/lon toggle button, so you can't turn it off.
• If you display the Interstate highways map at infinite density, the IGC crashes. (Fortunately, it'll restart automatically.)
• Though you can request the CFC product from an 88D (as noted above), there's no way to display it.
• Geostrophic and ageostrophic winds are calculated incorrectly in the Product Maker. Don't use them.

New features

• It is now possible to send administrative messages (ADR) on the AWIPS Wide Area Network (WAN). A new Attach... button is enabled on the Text Editor control bar when editing ADR products only, to allow attaching files to these messages.

Improvements

• Inventory times in the browser now auto-update.
• Scripts can now be renamed, via an option under the File menu of the script editor. Also, a new script no longer carries a default name. When you save a new script, you're prompted for a name under which to save it.
• The "Recover Edit Session..." dialog is extended to allow recovery of in-progress files from any workstation. Thus, if the workstation crashes and can't be restarted, you can use another to complete your editing.
• A dialog is added confirming that you really want to cancel your edit session. (This reduces the possibility of accidentally trashing a product in progress.)
• The dialog to confirm your request to store a text product has been removed, as has the "do you really want to print?" dialog. A couple fewer buttons to click. :^)
• An office suite of alarm/alert products may be set by your site administrator. You can add others, but cannot modify those from the workstation.
• An in-progress message is included while makeWRKSLS is working.
• The status box for the zones/nowcast formatting programs now includes more progress-tracking information.

Bug fixes

• The default browser origin is based on the local site ID (rather than always being "West"). Similarly, the WSR CCC now appears in the local origin menu, with an appropriate list of WSRnnnxxx products.
• In case of formatting error, the zones/nowcast programs no longer store a header-only product to the database. Also, the message dialog for those programs is now large enough to display the full message text, if an error occurs.
• The behavior of the browser inventory process has changed. Previously, if you selected, say, MTR, then another NNN, you had to wait perhaps quite some time for the MTR inventory to display before the browser would show the new NNN's XXXs. Now, the latter will come up right away (though its inventory will still wait until the first inventory completes). The result is a much more responsive browser.
• When you are viewing the earliest version of a product and select Previous, the screen no longer clears.
• The xx.NNN command now properly includes national bit products. Also, such queries are more responsive, because they display products as they are retrieved from the database, rather than collecting them all first.
• AIRMETs are now properly split out to be stored as WAxS, WAxT, and WAxZ, instead of all being stored under WAxO [x=1..6].
• The text browser now shows essentially all products for all sites. In general, all products appropriate for the U.S. are stored in the text database. If you find products missing from the browser, please report the problem in the eLog.
• It is no longer necessary to restart text workstations after a package swap, because the notification process (for alarm/alert, auto update, and WarnGen auto-display) now saves and restores its list of clients on restart. (This means that the first bug below is much less likely to happen, though still possible for other reasons.)
• Significant-level sounding text, previously stored under cccSIGxxx is now stored under the more traditional cccSGLxxx.
• Mandatory-level sounding data are now available. Previously, the only ones of these stored were in MANAWN.
• The Alarm bell now pops up where last positioned by the user, rather than always in the upper-left corner.

New or remaining bugs

• The WarnGen window occasionally doesn't pop up automatically. Workaround: Request WRKWGx from any window. (The warning expiration reminder won't work in this case.)
• The text subsystem still uses 3-character station IDs. As a result, the Help function in the browser and the button-2 popup station ID info on METAR messages have some problems. In the former, the trailing three characters are used, and some lower-48 sites are identified as Alaskan, and vice versa. In the latter, 4 characters are used only for Kxxx sites. Others use just the first 3, so Pxxx IDs are not found or are incorrect.
• Torn-away menus don't respond to changes in the edit state.
• The text database distinguishes products by length. "Long" products (> 2000 bytes) are stored in a separate part of the database, and must be defined as such; if a product exceeds the limit, but is not specified on the list of long categories, it will be truncated. Your AWIPS Focal Point can move products to the long-products storage area.
• A:HH CCCNNN still does not work properly, though A: does. A:HH gives you data from HH hours ago, rather than from hour HH.
• Like many other products, pilot reports come in a collective and are stored under the site id instead of your local CCC. Thus, a pilot report referenced to DHN would be stored as BHMPIRDHN. They can be called up by state using "ss.PIR". Some PiReps erroneously get stored by 2-letter state ID, e.g., PIRAK.

• A:HH CCCNNN commands can be entered again, as it's possible to enter a space into a product request. (This request still does not work properly, though.)
• The product maker now works on scales other than CONUS.
• Hydro applications are now available from the D2D Surface menu, in addition to the root pop-up/other workspace. When you select a hydro application from the D2D menu, it will come up in the D2D workspace.
• Several items have been added to the skew-T plots. These include helicity, storm motion, and storm info when you zoom beyond 2x on the hodograph; and helicity, storm motion, height of wet-bulb zero, soaring parameters (trigger temp and soaring index), CCL, LCL, LFC, and convective gust potential in the annotation text. Also, the text below the plots will abbreviate when character size gets large, to allow you to see as many of the numbers as possible.
• When you Exit the display software, the Volume Browser (and any other open applications) now shuts down, too.
• National-scale satellite images now auto-update.
• Previously, the display might crash while loading a text-based product (e.g., flash flood guidance, SPC watch), or the product might display improperly. This has been fixed.
• Roaming outside of a panel in 4-panel mode no longer causes a display crash.
• The "novocaine effect" seems finally to be gone. A combination of operating system upgrades, system tuning, and software modifications have contributed to this improvement.
• LDAD plots - We still are lacking complete metadata on the CDoT stations, so there are a some stations we can't plot.
• ALERT precip plots are now properly scaled, and are summed from all 5-minute reports.
• LAPS surface moisture convergence is now divergence, and has the correct sign. (It's still identified on the menu as convergence. That'll be fixed in Build 4.1.)

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This page is maintained by Joe Wakefield.

Last modified: 1 May 98