wmweather+(1x)wmweather+(1x)NAME
wmweather+ - A dock app for displaying weather information
SYNOPSIS
wmweather+ [options]
DESCRIPTION
wmweather+ downloads current conditions, forecast data, and optionally
a radar image. It will also watch for various warnings and display them
using an external command.
OPTIONS
Note that later options override earlier ones, and command line options
override configuration file options. All multi-character options may be
specified with one or two leading dashes. The configuration file is
simply one option (with value if necessary) per line, leading dashes
optional. Empty lines and lines beginning with the '#' character are
ignored.
General Options
-display <display name>
Name of display to use.
-c <file>
Specify a configuration file instead of the default. This option
is ignored in the configuration file.
-display-mode <string>
Specify the starting display mode. Valid values are "cur"/"cur‐
rent", "fcst"/"forecast", and "map"/"radar".
-location <latitude+longitude>
Specify a latitude and longitude, for example "41'59'00N
87'55'00W" or "N41.9833333333333 W87.9166666666667". You may use
either the decimal or DMS notation, with either a prefixed sign
or a prefixed or suffixed N/S/E/W. If this option isn't given,
the program will assume you live on the equator and guess your
longitude based on your system timezone offset.
-e, -email <address>
Specify the anonymous FTP password.
-v, -version
Display version number and exit.
-viewer <program>
External program for viewing weather warnings. This command must
take the text to display from standard input. It will be exe‐
cuted as '/bin/sh -c <program>' with stdout redirected to
/dev/null. If not specified, it will default to "xless".
-animate, -noanimate
Turn animation on or off. Animation may still be toggled with
the middle mouse button as described below. The default is on.
Station Options
-s, -station <ID>
Station ID for all stations. Equivalent to '-metar-station <ID>
-avn-station <ID> -eta-station <ID> -mrf-station <ID>'.
-metar-station <ID>
Station ID for METAR observations. See Current Conditions for
more information. A value must be provided.
-avn-station <ID>
Station ID for AVN forecasts. See Forecasts for more informa‐
tion.
-eta-station <ID>
Station ID for ETA forecasts. See Forecasts for more informa‐
tion.
-mrf-station <ID>
Station ID for MRF forecasts. See Forecasts for more informa‐
tion.
-warning-zone <zoneID>
Zone ID for weather warnings. See Warnings for more information.
This option may be repeated for multiple zones.
-forget-warning-zones
Cause wmweather+ to forget all warning zones found to this
point. Useful for user configuration files to override the warn‐
ing zones specified in the system-wide configuration.
-metar-uri <URI>
-avn-uri <URI>
-eta-uri <URI>
-mrf-uri <URI>
-warning-uri <URI>
URI to download the specified data from. See URIs for more
information.
-metar-post <DATA>
-avn-post <DATA>
-eta-post <DATA>
-mrf-post <DATA>
-warning-post <DATA>
Post data for downloading the specified data. See URIs for more
information. Note that the post option must follow the corre‐
sponding URI option. Note that the post data will not be URL-
encoded for you.
-noradar
Do not display a radar image. This is the default.
-radar-uri <URI>
-radar-post <DATA>
Retrieve an image from the specified URI. See Radar Map for more
information.
-radar-crop <string>
How to crop the radar image. XxY+W+H format. See Radar Map for
more information.
-radar-cross <string>
Where to draw radar crosshairs. XxY format. See Radar Map for
more information.
Measurement Options
-m, -metric
Same as '-cm -hPa -kph -tempc'.
-in Display precipitation amounts in inches. This is the default.
-cm Display precipitation amounts in centimeters.
-inHg Display pressure in inches of mercury. This is the default.
-hPa, -mbar
Display pressure in hectopascal (millibars)
-mmHg Display pressure in millimeters of mercury.
-atm Display pressure in atmospheres.
-mph Display windspeed in miles/hour. This is the default.
-kph Display windspeed in kilometers/hour.
-knots Display windspeed in knots.
-mps Display windspeed in meters/second.
-beaufort
Display windspeed on the Beaufort scale.
-tempf Display temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. This is the default.
-tempc Display temperature in degrees Celcius.
DISPLAY
The dockapp has three display modes: Current Conditions, Forecasts, and
Radar Map. Modes are selected by the buttons across the top of the
icon. Weather Warning status is indicated by the font color. At any
point double-(left)clicking the main display will send SIGUSR1 to the
process (see SIGNALS).
Current Conditions
This mode displays the current conditions as given in the METAR report
for the selected station, as downloaded from
http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/observations/metar/stations/
⟨http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/observations/metar/stations/⟩ .
Downloads are attempted every 15 minutes. Find your station at
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/tg/siteloc.php
⟨http://www.nws.noaa.gov/tg/siteloc.php⟩ .
The station ID is displayed at the top left of the display. The obser‐
vation date (local) is to the right, and the time (local and UTC) occu‐
pies the line below. Under that, to the right is the temperature and
relative humidity, the wind direction and speed, the atmospheric pres‐
sure (indicated by "P"), the heat index (indicated by "HI"), and the
wind chill (indicated by "WC").
To the left is a graphical display of the current weather. The sky con‐
dition is indicated as clear (sun), partly cloudy (sun with small
clouds), mostly cloudy (sun behind a large cloud), or overcast (large
cloud). This image may be covered by fog (foggy overlay),
dust/sand/haze (brownish particles), or blowing snow/dust/sand (blue
wind-lines), with the level of transparency indicating the degree of
visibility. If a funnel cloud or tornado was reported, a tornado
graphic will be displayed instead of the sky condition.
Beneath this graphic, icons will depict rain (raindrop), snow
(snowflake), freezing precipitation (hailstones), and thunderstorms
(lightning bolt). If animation is enabled, the icons will appear and
vanish on a ten second cycle to indicate precipitation intensity. Ani‐
mation may be enabled or disabled by middle-clicking the display.
Forecasts
This mode displays the current conditions as given in the AVN, ETA, and
MRF data for the selected stations, as downloaded from
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/tdl/synop/products/bullform.mav.htm
⟨http://www.nws.noaa.gov/tdl/synop/products/bullform.mav.htm⟩ ,
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/synop/products/bullform.met.htm
⟨http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/synop/products/bullform.met.htm⟩ and
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/tdl/synop/products/bullform.mex.htm
⟨http://www.nws.noaa.gov/tdl/synop/products/bullform.mex.htm⟩ . AVN
and ETA reports are downloaded at startup, 0000Z, and 1200Z. MRF
reports are downloaded at startup and 0000Z. In the event of failure,
downloads will be retried every 15 minutes. See the URIs given to find
your stations.
The display is divided into two sections. A small window at the top
indicates the date and hour (local time) for which this forecast is
valid. Left-clicking this window or clicking the small arrow-button to
the right will advance to the next forecast; right-clicking or clicking
the small arrow-button to the left will move to the previous forecast.
Middle-clicking will return to the first forecast in the list.
The larger display at the bottom shows the forecast for the selected
date and time. To the right from top to bottom are the station ID, the
daily high and low temperatures, the predicted temperature and relative
humidity, and the wind direction and speed. The final line may display
the heat index (HI), the wind chill (WC), the amount of snow to fall in
that period (SN), the amount of liquid-equivalent precipitation to fall
in that period (P), or the forecast type (e.g. "AVN" or "MRF").
To the left is a weather display similar to that for the Current Condi‐
tions. The animation here indicates the percent chance of rain, snow,
freezing precipitation, thunderstorms, and severe thunderstorms (large
lightning bolt). Animation may be turned on or off with the middle
button. When animation is off, the mouse wheel may be used to adjust
the cutoff chance for the display (hold Shift to adjust faster). The
cutoff will be displayed briefly when first turning off animation, when
first displaying forecasts, whenever button 6 (typically, the 'side'
button) is held down in the large display. Permanent cutoff display may
be toggled by double-middle-clicking the large display.
Radar Map
The radar image will be downloaded every 30 minutes from the URI speci‐
fied. Then, if -radar-crop was specified in the form XxY+W+H, a subim‐
age of witdh W and height H will be taken, with the upper-left pixel
taken from (X, Y). If X or Y is negative, it will be measured from the
right/bottom of the image instead of the top/left. The image is then
resized to fit within the 52x40 rectangle available. A border around
the image indicates the current font color. If -radar-cross was speci‐
fied in the form XxY, crosshairs will then be drawn over the pixel (X,
Y) when the middle button is held on the radar map.
If -noradar was specified or no radar data is available, an image to
that effect will be displayed instead.
Some nice images are available from
http://weather.noaa.gov/radar/mosaic/DS.p19r0/ar.us.conus.shtml
⟨http://weather.noaa.gov/radar/mosaic/DS.p19r0/ar.us.conus.shtml⟩ and
http://www.weather.com/common/home/maps.html
⟨http://www.weather.com/common/home/maps.html⟩ . Be kind, since the
display is so small pick the smallest version of the image to download.
Weather Warnings
Various weather warnings, watches, and statements for the specified
zone are downloaded from
http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/watches_warnings/
⟨http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/watches_warnings/⟩ . Downloads are
attempted at the same time METAR observations are retrieved. Find your
zone at http://weather.noaa.gov/ ⟨http://weather.noaa.gov/⟩ or
http://weather.gov/ ⟨http://weather.gov/⟩ . Note that some areas issue
weather warnings by multiple geopolitical units (e.g. "zones" and
"counties"). The -warning-zone option may be specified multiple times,
so all appropriate files may be inspected.
If any new warnings are downloaded, all text will be displayed in an
orange/red scheme instead of the normal blue/orange. The new warnings
may then be viewed by left-clicking the large display window in any
mode. At any point, all current warnings may be displayed by right-
clicking the large display.
URIs
The URIs from which the various observations, forecasts, and images are
downloaded can be easily customized by supplying values for the various
-*-uri options. The following substitution variables are available:
%s The station ID for the specified data type (note that warnings
have no station ID).
%z The zone ID, for warnings.
%f The warning type, for warnings (e.g. "tornado", "spe‐
cial_weather_stmt").
The substitutions can be manipulated with the standard printf(3) modi‐
fiers for strings, in particular the #, 0, -, ' ', +, and ' flags, the
field width, and the precision fields are accepted. Also, an additional
flag ! is recognized to use the capitalized versions of various
numeric flags (e.g. X versus x) and to capitalize character or string
values, and an additional syntax ><offset> after the precision is rec‐
ognized to start at an offset into the string value (negative values
indicate offset from the end of the string).
The current defaults are:
metar-uri
http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/observations/metar/stations/%s.TXT
avn-uri
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/mos/getmav.pl?sta=%s
eta-uri
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/mos/getmet.pl?sta=%s
mrf-uri
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/mos/getmex.pl?sta=%s
warning-uri
http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/watches_warnings/%f/%.2z/%z.txt
FILES
$HOME/.wmweather+/
Directory used to store downloaded data files. These files may
be deleted at any time.
$HOME/.wmweather+/conf
User configuration.
/etc/wmweather+.conf
System configuration.
$HOME/.wmweather+/.dir-test
Created and deleted to test write access to $HOME/.wmweather+/
SIGNALS
SIGUSR1
Forces downloads for the current mode to be attempted immedi‐
ately.
SIGUSR2
Forces all downloads to be attempted immediately.
BUGS
Before reporting a bug, please check the HINTS file (in particular,
proxy instructions are in that file). Also, please verify that you have
the latest version of wmweather+, and that your bug has not already
been reported. Bugs may be filed at
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=60336&atid=493854
⟨http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=60336&atid=493854⟩ .
AUTHORS
wmweather+ was written by Brad Jorsch <anomie@users.sourceforge.net>,
using the wmgeneral code by Martijn Pieterse <pieterse@xs4all.nl>.
Email regarding wmweather+ should be sent to anomie@users.source‐
forge.net.
INSPIRATION
wmWeather was a good idea, but it didn't give me enough information.
However, no code from wmWeather was used in writing wmweather+.
February 18, 2016 wmweather+(1x)
