TclGrads
TclGrads is a library of procedures for executing commands in GrADS from a Tcl script. It sends commands to GrADS and parse its output, making available the extensive processing capabilities of Tcl to manipulate the results of the commands.
Binary packages for FreeBSD, CentOS and Debian, as well as some documentation, are available from the software section of this site. The full CVS sources are kept under the OpenGrADS project at Sourceforge, and the tclgrads wiki page has more instructions about installation, usage and examples.
TclGempak
TclGempak is a library of procedures for executing Gempak (gpxxx) programs from a Tcl script. TclGempak requires some of the modules of the Tcllib library, but there are no other requirements, and in particular it is a pure Tcl library so there is nothing to compile.
The Gempak programs accept commands on the standard input but they lack the capabilities of a scripting language such as variables, conditional statements, loops and flow control. The common workaround is to use ``HERE'' documents in shell scripts, but the scripts become hard to mantain and it is almost impossible to develop larger scale applications. The tclgempak library is designed to overcome these limitations.
Sources, documentation and binary packages for FreeBSD, CentOS and Debian, in tbz, rpm and deb formats, respectively, are available from the software section. Since TclGempak is written entirely in Tcl, the packages can be installed anywhere the same package management tools are used.
The tclgempak documentation page has more instructions about installation, usage and examples.
TclMetar
TclMetar is a library of Tcl procedures for decoding Metar reports from a Tcl script. TclMetar requires some of the modules of the Tcllib library. There are no other requirements, and in particular it is a pure Tcl library so there is nothing to compile.
Sources, documentation and binary packages for FreeBSD, CentOS and Debian, in tbz, rpm and deb formats, respectively, are available from the software section. Since TclMetar is written entirely in Tcl, the packages can be installed anywhere the same package management tools are used.
The tclmetar documentation page has more instructions about installation, usage and examples.
The three packages come with a concise description of the functions available and many examples.
Grib Shell
The nbsp package contains two tools for viewing the grib files processed by the gribfilter:
- nbspgribsh (local use)
- nbspgribrsh (remote use)
nbspgribsh is meant to be used in the same machine in which nbsp is running. nbspgribrsh does similar work but contacts a remote machine running nbsp. Let us start with nbspgribsh.
- In a terminal window, execute
nbspgribsh
- In the window that opens, click on the File list menu and choose gfs (or any other model). Then choose a particular date-time in the submenu, and again a particular file in the following submenu, such as 2008110906_gfs_yqb.
- Click on the GrADS menu. That will open two windows: one for entering GrADS commands and the ither for display.
- In the GrADS command window type the following
set gxout shaded d tmpprs set gxout contour d tmpprs printim example.png quit
- That will plot a surface temparature map in the GrADS display and you will be left with the image file example.png that can be displayed with any image viewer.
nbspgribrsh on the other hand, contacts a remote machine. For example, if the remotre machine is www.opennoaaport.net then nbspgribrsh is invoked thus
nbspgribrsh http://www.opennoaaport.net:8015/grib
nbspgribrsh presents a menu similar to the one decscribed above, except that the files are located in the remote computer. The steps in the previous tutorial can be repeated, except that that initially it will take a fe seconds while the program downloads the data files from the remote server.