8 July 2004

Station Selection GUI and Volume Browser Source Menu

Presented By: Jim Ramer

Attendees: Joe Wakefield, Carl Bullock, Brian Motta,
Leigh Cheatwood, Vada Driesbach, Woody Robers, 
Jim Fluke, Susan Williams

Volume Browser Source Menu
--------------------------

With the addition new data sources, the Source menu in the 
Volume Browser is getting overly large. Jim presented a new
Volume Browser where the Source menu is actually broken
into two menus: Grid and Other.

Under Grids, the user will find model sources and under
'Other' the user will find Soundings, Metars, DMD, LDAD,
GOES Bufr, POES Bufr, etc.

Sorting the entries in the 'Grid' and 'Other' menu were
discussed. Suggested that a case insensitive alphabetic
order would be best.

Station Select GUI
------------------

Jim presented a prototype of the Stations Selection GUI.
This GUI would enable the user to select the station(s)
to use for Volume Browser displays of point data by
typing the station id(s) into the GUI. This GUI is mostly
meant to support the display of Digital Mesocyclone data
from the 88D, where there is no constant relationship 
between meocyclone ids and lat/lon.

- The GUI is launched from the 'Tools' menu as well
as in the Volume Browser. The name of the tool was
discussed at some length and the group came to no
resolution. Two of the suggestions were 'Browse
Stations...' and 'Choose by ID...'

- As shown, the GUI needs to be made more 'pretty.' 
Suggested a 'Help' buttons

- The user would enter into the GUI a point or a baseline
(end points or mor than one stations) and must hit 'Enter'.
Discussion followed on how to indicate if the point or
baseline is out of sync. Suggested graying out or placing
an asterick next to the entry in the points of baseline 
entered.

- This GUI is particularily useful for tracking Digital
Mesocyclone Data as this data are not tied to a static
point. Can the point 'stick' to the feature?

- As the DMD data were displayed in this preliminary
display, no ranking of severity could be seen. As 
opposed to as now the Mesocyclone data are displayed in
table format. Suggested a multi-color graphics which
may be included in ALPS development. Suggested that
sampling the indiviual cells could give severity information
to the user and perhaps utilizing the radar graphics
controls.