<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>Geoff</div><div><br></div><div>You have and are doing great job!<br><br>Regards<div>Peter </div></div><div><br>On 01/11/2011, at 23:13, Geoff Gatward <<a href="mailto:geoff@gatwards.org">geoff@gatwards.org</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">Folks,</div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">
<br></div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">Over the past year the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) have been upgrading their online offerings, and now provide warnings for just over 50% of the country (NSW / VIC / TAS / SA) in XML format, with the remainder to be migrated over the next couple of months. The new XML format also FINALLY standardizes the warning formats, and introduces the BoM's own shapefile sets for use with these new products.</div>
<div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br></div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">The current WXSVR-AU takes pretty much free-form text versions of the warnings and sends out APRS messages that mirror EXACTLY the format used by the US WXSVR for the NWS alerts, and the shapefiles used here were re-compiled to contain the same structure as the NWS issued files, in order that existing APRS clients could easily use the AU data.</div>
<div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br></div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">With the publication by BoM of "official" shapefiles, with their own structure, the time has come to make some changes.</div>
<div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br></div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">I have already performed a lot of code changes on WXSVR-AU to convert the XML data into APRS strings, and I have kept the packet structure the same, however the data contained within is now different enough from the NWS data that existing client implementations won't work. </div>
<div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br></div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">I have posted this info as well as some more detailed protocol information on the APRS-Sig list, which is where the authors of several major clients (Xastir, Findu, JavAPRS, APRSICE) tend to congregate. I am hoping that the new BoM protocol can be integrated into these client applications so that they can work with our new system and be available by the time QLD, WA and NT come online with XML data from BoM.</div>
<div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br></div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">The new strings are being sent out by the server in parallel to the 'legacy' strings, so if anyone feels like working on a new plugin for UI-View please feel free to contact me off-list for details on the new shapefiles and the updated WXSVR-AU protocol.</div>
<div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br></div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">Regards,</div></div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">
Geoff VK2XJG / VK8GG</div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br></div><div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><br>
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