McIDAS-V Team Meeting Minutes - November 14, 2007

MAC - Matt Lazzara
- Matt has asked the MAC for details on their top 3 items - performance, flexibility, and usability
- Since the next mc-v-cc meeting is November 28th, he will give them a deadline of November 27th.

Performance -
- Dee would like to do some simple benchmark testing that compares -X to -V. 
- TomW thought that was premature and that we should wait for user feedback, so that we know exactly what kind of performance issues we should benchmark. 
- After a bit of discussion, it was decided that we should do some simple benchmark testing with surface obs, grid data, image display, image operations, subtracting an image from a grid, switching between loops, start-up time, etc. 

- Matt also mentioned that images still look bad on his Mac, so he's going to bring down his machine and compare it to one of the MUG testing machines.  Tom suggested that his color table may not have 256 colors, so that's something to check.

Training -
- In-house training is coming up in December.  The exact dates have not been determined, but we'll probably run two or three different sessions. 

Free access to McIDAS-V -
- Dee would like to have McIDAS-V available to anyone and advertised heavily by the 1st of the year.
- TomW agreed that it should be freely available, but thought that we need to have our documentation completed and the inquiry system functional before we start advertising.
- Bruce added that between alpha and beta, we should not be adding new functionality, but rather fixing the list of bugs that are known in the alpha version.  New functionality is for the next release, not this one. 
- General consensus was that we should make -V freely available soon, but because there are still bugs in this alpha version, we should wait until at least the AMS before really pushing people to try -V.
- When removing the logon/password protection of the -V software, we should also add something that requests information about the user, but is not required in order to download the software. 
- DaveP is adding a feature to -V so that it can query a file on the SSEC web server to know if there is a new version of -V available.  At this time, it will not download/install the new version, but it will tell you where to get it. 
- Documentation is very important for the next release of -V to be called beta. 

Users forum -
- Tommy brought up that we should be setting up a users forum for users to discuss things in -V. 

Server status -
- DaveS will be starting up the server meetings soon.

GUI Meetings -
- Rick asked if we should disband the GUI meetings and come up with a developers meeting
- Dee said that she thinks that there should be regular developer meetings
- TomW thinks we should have developer meetings, but announce the topic ahead of time, so people can decide if they should attend
- Becky said that if we announce certain topics, we may want to have someone like DaveS or TomW decide who should attend, so that we get the appropriate people at each meeting
- Dee mentioned that one reason for the success of the "GUI" meetings is accountability
- No decision was made, but these meetings should be revamped in some way


Currently being worked on (reported by Becky from information reported at the Monday GUI developers meeting)

DaveP
- solaris installers (thinks he's done, but just finished Monday and they haven't been tested)
- update mac installer so the java icon is back to the -v logo (done)

Gail
- server manager (thinks she's done, but haven't been tested)
- test images chooser (working on absolute times, should be done this work)

Bruce
- getting the names between the field selector and the main app consistent (view, panel, display, etc)

Jon
- zoom that follows the mouse (Jon's work is done, but is waiting for Unidata to incorporate some of his necessary changes)
- toolbar favorites (should be done by the end of the week)
- start-up preferences (should be done by the end of the week)
- jython editor into mc-v (about half done)


Priorities for Beta (hopefully will be prioritized by mc-v-cc in two weeks)
- Documentation
- Performance
- Item #5 from MUG Meeting Priorities
McIDAS-V, without the bridge, must access and output other types of data already available in McIDAS-X.
a. Display local and remote image datasets, including old satellite imagery
b. Plot and contour local and remote grid datasets
c. Plot and contour local and remote point datasets
d. Save the digital data file(s) generated in a, b, or c