Eric-
So where do we go from here?
I know that Art Person (PSU) and all of us here at Millersville are committed to
maintaining a DIFAX mapwall in our respective institutions. There are other possibilities
such as UNISYS...so I think we need to get UNIDATA involved, despite the fact they live
and breath in the "electronic map world". But down here where the rubber meets
the road, paper difax maps are still a fundamental part of the educational and forecast
process.
Unidata HAS been involved in providing several options other than Unisys.
Unidata has never subsidized DIFAX from Alden. In addition to the options
provided in several different emails this past summer, University of Wisconsin
has offered up GEMPAK scripts to create DIFAX-like maps. University Mass -
Lowell has indicated that they are automatically downloading maps from the NWS
web site. Perhaps they are willing to share their scripts with others (even
though they are VAX scripts, they could probably be adapted). The NWS will
terminate the DIFAX feed soon, so even the Unisys option is a short-term
bandaid.
One of the fundamental aspects of Unidata is community building. Perhaps
someone in the DIFAX community would be willing to automatically generate DIFAX
or DIFAX-like products and feed them via LDM to others dependent on DIFAX.
Apparently, we now have a spare feed type. ;-)
Additionally, since most of the people on the ldm-users list do not receive
DIFAX, perhaps discussion of this topic should be moved to the
difax@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx list which was set up several years ago to discuss DIFAX
specific issues like this.
Just my $.02
Don Murray
