SeaDAS 7.4 Released

[OB SeaDAS - aynur]

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SeaDAS 7.4 Release Notes
Release Date: March 6, 2017
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The SeaDAS development team is pleased to announce the release of SeaDAS 7.4.

The critical factor in the SeaDAS 7.4 release is that it now uses the https web protocol for acquiring files. NASA no
longer supports the http protocol so previous versions of SeaDAS can no longer retrieve files from NASA.

Additional to this, SeaDAS 7.4 adds new options and preferences for color palettes, color bars, map gridlines, and
RGB image creation.

Primary Package

FEATURE ADDITIONS/MODIFICATIONS

- Color Bar
1. The color bar labels will now automatically default with enough decimal places to display small numbers
2. Text may be substituted in place of values on the color bar labels
3. Color schemes configuration file now supports color bar labels defaults
4. Color bar location on image can now be set
5. Color bar backdrop transparency can now be set
6. Color bar text color is now fully adjustable
7. Color bar preferences page has been added

- Color Palettes
1. There is now a toggle button in the Color Manager to reverse the direction of a color palette
2. Color palettes can now be exported in the CPT format and the PAL format
3. Color palettes preferences page has been added which includes color-blind palette configuration option

- Map Gridlines (formerly called Graticules)
1. Added option to display label in either compass format or signed format (in example for longitude: -90 instead of 90W)
2. Added option to display label in decimal format or in the format of degrees, minutes, seconds
3. Gridlines Preference page has been added

- RGB Image
1. RGB Image Preferences page now enables the range setting of the RGB color palette (default uses statistics
of the bands).
2. Additional RGB Profiles have been added.

- Text Annotation (Beta version)
1. This feature is new and not fully complete and may not work on some image files. Text appears with
semi-transparent background to delineate text from image. Note: the same type of text also now appears
on the Pins Tool and the GCP Tool.

- Field Measurements
1. Command-line tools added which create validation collocation match-ups between field
(in situ) data measurements (points or a SeaBASS file) and Level-2 ocean color satellite data

- Level2 Masks
1. Two choices are now available for the naming convention of the masks which are based on the level2 flags.
One identically matches level2 flag names (but now is alphabetized instead of by bit order), the other
is a user-friendly name version. See Preferences->Mask Layer
2. Added two quality level masks "Quality_L2" and "Quality_L3" which combines the level2 flags to match the
standard quality flags being used currently in the production of the OB.DAAC products.
3. Added "Water" mask convenience shortcut which is Water=!LAND.

- Menu Reorganization
1. Minor changes to top level menu

BUG FIXES

- OCSSW GUIs will now once more fully work again. A change in web protocols to require https recently caused
some internet calls within the GUI to fail. This is now fixed.

- Further fixes problem where color bar would sometimes not always display the end point label when
used in manually entered points mode.

HELP PAGES

- Field Measurement help pages have been added

Science Processing Code

FEATURES ADDITIONS/MODIFICATIONS

- (Note: SeaDAS GUI has now been updated to support new web protocol of https)

- multilevel_processor (command line and GUI) now supports l3mapgen (smigen support removed).

- l2bin GUI now enables selection of flaguse="NONE" to run with no flags. Leaving the flaguse field blank in the GUI results
in the default flags being used.

BUG FIXES
-

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Notes
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Some of the help pages internal to SeaDAS 7.4 have not been revised to match the current version so there can be
some wording discrepancies as well as feature description differences. However, we regularly produce video help
tutorials (https://seadas.gsfc.nasa.gov (/tutorial)). We feel this to be the best, most functional way to
enable the user of SeaDAS to get the most out of the software. In additional we regularly respond to SeaDAS issues
on the our user forum
(https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/forum/oceancolor/forum_show.pl). Questions posted on
the forum help aid us in determining aspects of SeaDAS which may benefit by refinement, as well as give us ideas
for topics to be used in future tutorial videos. Also note that these internal help pages are also made available at
(https://seadas.gsfc.nasa.gov/help/)

If you already have SeaDAS version 7 or higher installed:
In your home directory there is a directory titled '.seadas'. This contains version-specific preferences
and defaults. This directory also contains any custom color palettes and rgb-profiles which you may have
created. Because of this, a seadas installation will automically move and rename the previous '.seadas'
directory putting it in your home directory. When seadas is launched and does not find this '.seadas'
directory, it will automically create this directory and initialize it with the package settings and defaults.
You can then manually copy any of your custom color palettes and rgb-profiles from the backed up copy
of your previous version's '.seadas' directory over into the '.seadas' directory.