McIDAS-X User Responses:
Pros and Cons of the McIDAS-X GUI

Original Request:

Do you a GUI with McIDAS? If yes, please read on.

Do you use the GUI that comes with the McIDAS install?
If yes, please tell us what you like and do not like about it.

If you use your own GUI, please us what changes you have made.

Thanks in advance for your comments.
Dee

We use the gui mainly for the "shortcut buttons". The cursor probe with lat/lon and Brit/Temp info are also useful as well as the vcr buttons for frame control. It would be nice to have google-like navigation control for zoom-in/out and panning capability.

Louis Nguyen - NASA-Langley

2 best features:

- image controls....cntl-A and cntl-B are a pain and don't make any sense!

- being able to recall previous key-ins.

Tim Schmit - SSEC

The command history is very nice.    Initializing  SERVERTABLE.TDAT
can be cumbersome.   As you know -- to each their own.   I'm more
comfortable with the traditional commandline-driven McIDAS-X image window,
but perhaps that is because I've not taken the time to become intimately
familiar with the GUI.   I do think the GUI is nice, however.

Jim Nelson - SSEC

The best thing I like about the GUI is the fact I can look through the command history (which is important to my uses) easily. Haven't really encountered anything that I don't like.

William Straka - SSEC

Brian Hoeth, from the Spaceflight Meteorology Group (SMG) at Johnson Space Center, will respond from a user-perspective, but as developers, I will give a little information as well.  

When the first McIDAS GUI came out we adopted the concept and built a tailored ‘toolbar’ that allowed the SMG forecasters to select pre-loaded loops, ‘standard’ displays and tools to support their mission.  When the current version of the McIDAS GUI came out, SMG requested that we ‘integrate’ our ‘toolbar’ back into the McIDAS standard.  What we developed was a series of configuration files and scripts that allow a forecaster to sit at a workstation and select a ‘personality’ or ‘functional or positional role (i.e. forecasting for CONUS sites or forecasting for overseas sites)’ that is used to configure a series of buttons into the McIDAS GUI’s ‘shortcut’ buttons.  Several buttons are standardized across functions, such as custom enhancements, specialized data displays, or printer functions.  One is position-dependent, giving access to the pre-loaded image loops for the specific area of interest.  Each of the buttons is built into the McIDAS shortcut system as a call to a ‘code-generator’ TCL application that uses a configuration file to build a mcwish menu GUI ‘on-the-fly’, presenting the user with a custom menu.  This was done to allow the users to rapidly build any menu that they wanted and reconfigure without requiring software support.  Custom menus for individuals can be easily built and incorporated into the standard McIDAS GUI as well.

We have used the concept to take a slightly different approach to a presentation of weather data for one of SMG’s prime customers, the Shuttle Flight Directors.  They get a McIDAS image window with no command window (withdrawn), with the GUI wrapped around it and a selection of McIDAS standard and custom buttons, allowing access to selected image loops and single frame graphics.  This allows them to monitor weather information during shuttle operations without having to constantly ‘tap on the forecaster’s shoulders.’ 

Brice Biggerstaff - Johnson Space Center

I will reply from the operational user perspective and then I’ll let our software developers answer regarding the extensive changes they made to the GUI.

Do we use the GUI?

Yes.  As of last year, when our software developers integrated our “custom toolbar” into the McIDAS core GUI.

What we like about the GUI, in no particular order

(1)     List -> Command History is very useful so you don’t hit shift-7 and shift-6 until you’re blue in the face!

(2)     Configure -> Scheduler is GREAT because you can modify ANY ASPECT of the McIDAS scheduler entries.  Used to be that the only thing you could change with the SKU CHA command was the command itself, you couldn’t modify the date, time, etc.  Also, just having a point and click interface to the McIDAS scheduler makes it so easy that even a lead forecaster can now enter a SKED entry with little effort instead of trying to remember how to use all the keywords necessary with SKE.

(3)     Lat/lon and Temp readout, although I wish the Temp readout was in Celsius instead of Kelvin and I wish these readouts worked when looping is ON instead of only working when the loop is OFF.

(4)     Display -> Image is a pretty nice interface to IMGDISP.  Being able to define your own “box” with the Location tab is cool.

(5)     Display -> Grid is a decent interface to GRDDISP.  Not quite as nice as the AWIPS volume browser, but definitely better than typing.

(6)     Configure -> Graphics Parameters is a wonderful interface to GU.  It allows you to easily turn graphics colors on/off and to change colors to different colors.  One problem that we’ve run into with this though is that this interface seems to link up to the IMAGE frame instead of the GRAPHICS frame and since we run independent graphics, this is a problem unless we have our IMAGE and GRAPHICS synced up (not always the case).

(7)     Zooming IN and OUT with the magnifying glasses and the 1:1 button.  Much easier than having to use ZM and Alt-Z in conjuction!

(8)     File-> ADDE Servers is kinda nice.  I have to try to train the lead forecasters about DATALOC and DSINFO and this GUI tool makes it much easier than trying to type the commands.  I especially like the “Flags” column because it tells you what data types are available for each group.

(9)     The “Show Frame” button is actually nice.  SF is obviously easy to type, however using the “Show Frame” button has a nice feature in that it gives kind of an “inventory” of what is on each frame.  This is especially useful for us when trying to find an “open frame” since we have many frames that are dedicated to canned loops that are constantly updated in the background.  Again, unfortunately this is not user friendly completely for us since we use independent graphics.  A “Show Graphic” button would be nice.

(10)  Configure -> Shortcut Buttons is nice, but it would be perfect if you could create cascading menus!  You can create one level of a menu, but you cannot create sub-menus.  To that end, we had our software developers address this issue by integrating our “custom toolbar” into the “User-defined Button Toolbar”.  As I said, I’ll let them give the details on what they did.  It’s nice, but it’s still not perfect because the hope was that our “custom toolbar” would work just like the Configure -> Shortcut Buttons button in that it would be all button click configurable.  Their solution has made it such that our “custom toolbar” is configurable, but you have to edit files manually (not desirable for a lead forecaster).

In general, as you can tell from some of my comments, the main disadvantage of some of the GUI is that it’s not independent graphics friendly.

Brian Hoeth - Johnson Space Center

The GUI is mainly used here for:
* training
* demo purposes
* short-cut keys

Current problems with the GUI include:
* the SERVERTABLE.TDAT file takes forever to build if there are any invalid server entries in MCTABLE.TXT
* the GUI doesn't work for our point data (which is accessed via a secondary ADDE server)

Feedback on the short-cut keys:
"While I do not use all the features of the MCIDAS GUI,  I do make extensive use of "Shortcut" (Quick launch) buttons at the bottom. These buttons provide an excellent platform for Batch and McBasi jobs used on a regular basis.

If possible, I would like to organise my Quick Launch buttons into logical groups, to be defined by the user. Under the current GUI configuration, all the buttons are lumped together in a linear fashion. This can make it hard to find the required button, if users such as myself have  a lot of them.

Viva la GUI ! "

I'm aware of the short-cut keys being used in a number of our operational centres.

So the bottom line is people like to be able to get to their favourite things with a minimum of mouse clicks.

James Kelly - Australian Bureau of Meteorology