Using this manual

The McIDAS-X Programmer's Manual is designed to be an instructional guide for new McIDAS-X programmers and a reference for experienced McIDAS-X programmers. It assumes that you know the Fortran and C programming languages, and have a basic knowledge of McIDAS-X and your operating system.

This manual provides the information that you need to:

Write McIDAS-X applications on Unix-based systems
Understand the McIDAS-X data file formats
Program at the API (Application Program Interface) level, using the detailed API descriptions from the information provided in the API man pages.

This section discusses the following topics:

How this manual is organized

The McIDAS-X Programmer's Manual is divided into seven chapters plus appendices, a glossary and an index. Use the table below as a general guide to help you find the information you need.

If you're interested in	Turn to
Knowing what's in this manual and who it's written for, how to get help, and other McIDAS-X documentation that you can reference	Chapter 1, Introduction
The basics about developing applications programs in McIDAS-X, including the types of data available in McIDAS-X and the formats and conventions to use when writing online helps	Chapter 2, Learning the Basics
Setting up the McIDAS-X environment, and compiling, testing and debugging your McIDAS-X code	Chapter 3, Getting Started in McIDAS-X
A description of the McIDAS-X library functions that you'll use to write your applications programs	Chapter 4, McIDAS-X Utilities
Learning how to use McIDAS-X library functions to access data files	Chapter 5, Accessing Data
The file formats for the data files developed for applications running under McIDAS-X	Chapter 6, Format of the Data Files
Writing and maintaining locally developed servers for ADDE	Chapter 7, Writing ADDE Servers
SSEC's guidelines for writing online helps, and information about satellites and data parameters	Appendices: A, B, C, D
Definitions of some terms used in this manual	Glossary
The detailed descriptions for each API function that you need to build applications	Online man pages

Conventions used in this manual

Becoming familiar with the symbol, text and screen conventions in this manual will make the text easier for you to read and understand.

The conventions described below are:

Symbol conventions

1., 2., 3., ...	Numbered items indicate a task with two or more sequential steps.
	This symbol indicates a list of items that are not sequential.
	This symbol indicates a reference to other parts of this manual or to companion documentation for additional information.

Text conventions

The term function is used throughout this manual to describe C procedures and functions, and Fortran functions and subroutines. Function names are bolded; for example, Mccmd and mcgget.
File names, paths, environment variables and script names are in courier bold.
McIDAS-X commands are uppercase and unbolded.
Actual keyboard entries that you will type appear in bold. For example:

cd $HOME/mcidas/help

You will type keyboard entries exactly as they appear, leaving a space between each term or number in the command line. Always press Enter after typing a keyboard entry.

When you see an Alt entry, it means you will press two keys simultaneously. For example, Alt G means you should hold down the Alt key and press the G key.

Screen conventions

System prompts and responses, and code examples look like this:

c --- set up the ADDE transaction
      ...

100   continue
c --- read the data block
    status = mcalin(handle, data_buffer)
    if( status.lt.0 ) then
       call edest('Data Read failed',0)
       return

c --- got a line of data
      else if( status.eq.0 ) then

c --- read the line prefix
       status = mcapfx(handle, prefix_buffer)
       if( status.lt.0 ) then
          call edest('Prefix Read failed',0)
          goto 100
         endif

c --- process the data
         ...
         goto 100

      endif
      ...

Code samples longer than one page are not boxed.

An ellipsis ( ... ) in a code sample means one of the following:

Lines of code were omitted to condense the sample
You will write lines of code to replace the ellipsis

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