The User Preferences window is accessed in the Main Display window through the Edit->Preferences menu. The Formats & Data tab allows the user to define data formats and defaults to be used when displaying data. The below image represents the default values for the Formats & Data tab.

Image 1: Formats and Data Preferences (Default)

• Date Format - Sets the format used when McIDAS-V displays dates. The date format string uses the following symbols. Note, these symbols can be repeated to give different results.
• For example:

  "MMMM" gives full month name
  "MMM" gives short month name
  "MM" gives 2 digit month number
  "M" gives 1 or 2 digit month number
  

  Symbol	Description	Presentation	Example
  G	Era designator	Text	AD
  y	Year	Number	1996; 96
  M	Month in year	Text and Number	July; Jul; 07
  w	Week in year	Number	27
  W	Week in month	Number	2
  D	Day in year	Number	189
  d	Day in month	Number	10
  F	Day of week in month	Number	2
  E	Day in week	Text	Tuesday; Tue
  a	Am/pm marker	Text	PM
  H	Hour in day (0-23)	Number	0
  h	Hour in am/pm (1-12)	Number	12
  K	Hour in am/pm (0-11)	Number	0
  k	Hour in day (1-24)	Text	24
  m	Minute in hour	Number	30
  s	Second in minute	Number	55
  S	Millisecond	Number	978
  z	Time zone	Text and Number	Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
  Z	RFC 822 Time zone	Number	-0800
  '	Escape for text	Delimiter
  ''	Single quite	Literal

  Note: The "yyyy" year symbol can also be written as "yy" for recent data. However, it cannot be written as "y".

  Ex: The day 215 in the year 2009 would be written as "09215" yyDDD and not "9215" yDDD.

• Time Zone - Sets the time zone used by McIDAS-V. McIDAS-V will utilize this time zone for labeling the times of data, as well as for listing the time in the status bar in the Main Display window. This field defaults to GMT. Note that McIDAS-V must be restarted for a change in this field to take effect.
• Lat/Lon Format - Sets the format used when McIDAS-V displays latitudes and longitudes. The following symbols are valid in the decimal formatting.

  0	Digit
  #	Digit, zero shows as absent
  .	Decimal separator or monetary decimal separator
  -	Minus sign
  ,	Grouping separator
  E	Separates mantissa and exponent in scientific notation.
  ;	Subpattern boundary Separates positive and negative subpatterns

• The table below shows a list of example formats and the resulting display in the latitude and longitude values.

  Format	Example
  ##0	-95
  ##0.0	-94.6
  ##0.0#	-94.56
  ##0.0##	-94.563
  0.0	-094.6
  0.00	-094.56
  0.###E0	1.04E2
  000.#E0	104.6E0

• Probe Format - Sets the HTML template that is used to display data readouts in the data probe display. This HTML template can contain macros that are replaced with the probed values. Macros are:

  %value%	Formatted value
  %unit%	Display unit
  %rawvalue%	Unformatted value
  %rawunit%	Original unit

• Distance Unit - Sets the default unit that is used when displaying distances (e.g., in the Range and Bearing Control).
• Number Style - Sets the format for how numbers will be written with regards to the decimal symbol and digit grouping symbol (either a comma or a period). The default for this option is System Default, which means that your computer's preference will be used for the number style in McIDAS-V. If your computer's format differs from English, you can set Number Style to English/US. For example, English/US will write out the numerical value of one thousand as "1,000.00". McIDAS-V must be restarted in order for a change to this preference to take effect.

• Sampling Mode - Sets the sampling method used by data probes in McIDAS-V. Choose between a weighted average sampling or nearest neighbor.
• Pressure to Height - Sets the type of algorithm McIDAS-V uses for converting from pressure coordinates to height. See the FAQ for more information on this option.
• Cache Data in Memory - Attempts to cache data that McIDAS-V loads into memory for quicker data access. For more information, see Data Caching.
• Disk Cache Size - Sets the maximum amount of disk space used when caching data. McIDAS-V will cache some datasets to disk to eliminate network latency.
• Max Image Size - Sets the maximum image size (in pixels) that is to be displayed. When this preference is set, the image display will adjust the Pixel Sampling to reduce the image to less than the preferred value. This allows for the initial display of large images without causing memory issues. A value of -1 in this field imposes no limit on the maximum image size.
• Grid Threshold - Sets the size limit for holding grids in memory. Grids larger than this size will be cached to disk instead of held in memory during the McIDAS-V session. This allows loading large grids and long loops of grids without a major performance hit.