davidw@xxxxxxxx writes:
> tcy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> >
> > Dear Sir:
> >
> > Does NASA Collage or XDataSlice provide map background for displaying
> > netcdf data by using ENVISION? Thanks in advance.
> >
> > T.C. Yang
> > National Weather Service
> >
>
> 1) Collage and XDataSlice are NCSA products, not NASA. NASA however
> funded the development of Envision.
>
> 2) Collage and XDataSlice do not provide map backgrounds.
>
> 3) Some of the IDL tools included with Envision do display
> map backgrounds for data with lat/lon in the coordinates.
>
> 4) You should note that Envision, though still available, is no
> longer a supported project as NASA decided not to renew its funding
> for Envision.
Envision is still "semi-supported" by me, although I'm no longer
actively working on it. It is not funded by NASA now but may be
continued in some form here at NOAA Climate Diagnostics Center (CDC).
I'm happy to answer questions about it should you wish to use it.
There is extensive information including a user manual and a tutorial
on Envision at http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/envision/envision.html.
Envision runs on HP, SunOS, AIX, DEC Alpha OSF/1, and SGI IRIX. I
also have an unreleased Solaris port. Envision works with IDL and can
create contour plots with various projections and map backgrounds.
The HP version, however does not work with IDL, so Envision won't be
able to generate map backgrounds on that machine.
There are many free UNIX netCDF-compatible tools around that may be of
interest to netCDF users (not all work with HP machines, though).
Some of them are:
(1) FERRET from NOAA PMEL
(see http://columbia.wrc.noaa.gov/ferret/home.html)
(2) Freud from Univ. of Washington
(see http://www.atmos.washington.edu/jisao/freud)
(3) CRDtools from NOAA CDC
(see http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cdc/crdtools/crdtools.html)
(4) Toga-Tao Display Software from NOAA PMEL
(see http://columbia.wrc.noaa.gov/toga-tao/home.html)
We are also planning to assist COLA in a proposed effort to add a
netCDF file reader to the GrADS package
(see ftp://grads.iges.org/README).
The IDL package is commercial and will read netCDF files and do map
projections (among other things)
(see http://sslab.colorado.edu:2222/projects/IDL/idl_ssl_home.html)
Keith
+----------------------------------------+------------------------+
| Keith Searight, Project Manager | ksearight@xxxxxxxxxxxx |
| NOAA/CDC Climate Research Data Center | |
| CIRES, University of Colorado | Phone: (303) 492-7395 |
| Campus Box 449, Boulder, CO 80309-0449 | Fax: (303) 497-7013 |
+----------------------------------------+------------------------+
