McIDAS Programmer's Manual
Version 2003

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OUTL*

Base map files, where * is the map file name.

These variable-length, binary files contain the base map data for drawing graphical map outlines. The map files and their descriptions are provided in the table below.

Map file Description

OUTLSUPU

high resolution USA

OUTLSUPW

world coastal

OUTLUSAM

medium resolution USA

OUTLHPOL

world political boundaries

OUTLHRES

high resolution world coastal outline

OUTLUSAL

low resolution USA and North America

OUTLWRLD

world coastal

Word allocation for OUTLSUPU, OUTLSUPW, OUTLUSAM, OUTLHPOL and OUTLHRES

Words 1 to 6000 contain the directory for the line segments. Each directory block contains six words of information.

Word Description

0

number of blocks (line segments)

1

minimum latitude, degrees * 10000

2

maximum latitude, degrees * 10000

3

minimum longitude, degrees * 10000; west is positive

4

maximum longitude, degrees * 10000; west is positive

5

beginning word of data start for segment 1

6

number of words to read

7 - 12

directory for line segment 2

...

...

5995 - 6000

directory for line segment 1000

6001

latitude degrees * 10000

6002

longitude degrees * 10000

6003

latitude degrees * 10000

6004

longitude degrees * 10000

...

...


The maximum number of line segments is 1000. The number of points in a segment is limited to 3000 by the arrays in the MAP program.

Word allocation for OUTLUSAL and OUTLWRLD

Word Description

0 . . . n-1

n number of latitude/longitude pairs as halfwords; longitude, degrees * 10, 0 to 360 west is positive; latitude, degrees * 20, 0 to 180 north is positive; odd number means pen down; even number means pen up

n + 1

end of file marker; HEX FFFF0000

API functions

Currently, no API library functions exist for reading and writing base map files. There are, however, programs in McIDAS-XRD, MAKEMAP and MAP2TEXT, that convert McIDAS map files to and from a text format.


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