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BRAT - Basic Radar Altimetry Toolbox README

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Overview
========

The Basic Radar Altimetry Toolbox (BRAT) is a collection of tools

and tutorial documents designed to facilitate the processing of
radar altimetry data. BRAT is able to handle most distributed
radar altimetry data formats, providing support for ingesting,
processing, editing (to a certain extent), generating statistics,
visualising and exporting the results.

A full user manual for BRAT is available in the file

brat_user_manual_3.1.0.pdf in the 'doc' directory of the BRAT
distribution or installation. The user manual contains all the
necessary information about installing and running BRAT.

This README file contains the version history for BRAT, a list of
known issues, and any other last-minute added or updated
information that can not (yet) be found in the user manual. In
the case of conflicting information, this README file is
authoritative.

Version History

===============
3.1.0 - March 2012
------------------ Add an "aliases" capability, that enables users to use the same names for
the most frequent data fields.
- Add an index (brat_index_data) for data with a "time" dimension
(i.e. not available for some data, like grids).
- Add filters algorithms (four different filters have been implemented),
working along-track or on grids.
- The call to the geostrophic velocity algorithms is modified to use the
aliases for longitude and latitude, to make things simpler for users.
- Updated CODA to version 2.3.1.
- Internal (CODA) product type names for ERS product types have been aligned
with ESA naming convention (OPR_pass_file -> ALT.OPR, WAP -> ALT.WAP)
- Updated CryoSat product format (codadef) to be in line with upcoming
L1 PFS v4.9 and L2 PFS v2.8. Main changes impacting BRAT are:
- The field for the main dataset in the FDM product is now called
'siral_l2_fdm_mds' instead of 'siral_l2_fdo_mds'
- usr_corr field now has a scale factor of 1e-15 instead of 1e-7
- Fixed locating of User Manual document when selected from GUI.

3.0.1 - May 2011

---------------- Bugs fixed :
* The Loess filters computation were not applied if input files were netCDF
files.
* Fixed problem where incorrect lines were drawn for worldmap plots on
Windows due to rounding issues near the projection boundaries.
* Fixed issue where a 'marque' (box with dotted lines) could appear in a
worldmap plot.

* Included MSVC 2010 DLLs to BRAT IDL and MATLAB directories on Windows to
prevent usage problems of these interfaces.

3.0 - February 2011

------------------- Added algorithms computation module (geostrophic velocity algorithms).
- Added batch processing : BratScheduler enables to delay the execution of an
operation.
- Added support for Topex-Poseidon and ERS RA waveform products.
- It is now possible to drag & drop files into the Dataset panel.
- Several improvements to BratDisplay:
* the center/zoom functionality for worldplots has been greatly improved.
* the number of latitude/longitude grid lines will now increase/decrease
depending on the zoom level.
* latitude/longitude grid lines now come with a text label showing the
associated latitude/longitude value of the parallel/meridian.
* the 'animation bar' is now shown by default if the plot can be animated.
* Added support for new projections: Orthographic, Near-Sided Perspective,
and Stereographic.
* The save directory for image export will now be remembered for consecutive
calls to export.
* Added support to visualize vector plots.
- Improve 'ascii export' : 'ascii export' is able to export either the result
of the operation (default) or only dumps the expression data. In the
previous version of Brat, 'ascii export' only dumped the expression data.
- Updated CODA to version 1.5.
- BRAT now requires VTK 5.6.
- Bugs fixed :
* Statistics computation are not converted to wanted unit (set by the user).
* Display Expression Properties for a field were not updated properly in the

Views tab of BratGui on Mac OS X.

* The BRAT installer did now work on KDE SUSE 11 systems.

2.1.1 - June 2010

----------------- Bugs fixed :
* Regression issue in 2.1.0 that broke support of high resolution and
waveform data for ENVISAT RA-2 and ERS RA products.
* Possible loss of field names in expressions that contain aliases
* Wrong SSH formula for Topex product (SSH_TOPEX) (since BRAT 2.0.0):
'Topex dual-frequency ionospheric (Iono_Cor) correction' should be used
instead of 'Ionospheric correction from DORIS (Iono_Dor).
* When executing an operation within Brat GUI, expression was sometimes
reset if it contained a syntax error.
* For Topex products, the date in Brat output was wrong if the Brat
operation contained "high resolution" fields (data).

2.1.0 - March 2010

------------------ Updated RA2 product format specifications (codadef) to bring them in line
with the new Vol14 4/C product format specifications document.
- Improvements to the CRYOSAT product format definitions (codadef) file to
bring it in line with the latest official specification documents.
- Updated CODA to version 1.3.3.
- Bugs fixed :
* The Matlab API 'brathl_ReadData' could crash depending on how parameters
were passed to the API.
* BratDisplay could crash due to an invalid pointer.
* Incorrect fieldname for Export if 'Only dump expressions' was selected.
* Fixed column header for 'date as period' values in ascii export.

2.0.3 - November 2009

--------------------- Bugs fixed :
* An uninstall of BRAT would delete the entire installation
directory (/usr/local by default on Linux when installed as
root), including non-BRAT files and directories.
* BratExportAscii : issue with the FIELD_FORMAT parameter
which is not taken into account from the export parameters' file
(Notice that FIELD_FORMAT parameter is never set by using BratGui
and have to be set manually in the parameters' file).
* Get rid of 'RPM' error messages after a root install on
Linux.

2.0.2 - November 2009

-------------------- Bugs fixed :
* On Windows, BRAT could be looking on the wrong drive for its data files
* Fixed a few potential memory leak and memory corruption problems
* Uninstaller on Windows will now properly remove all files

2.0.1 - June 2009

----------------- Bugs fixed :
* Compilation errors under Linux X64
* BratDisplay sometimes crashes on close.
* BratGui sometimes crashes when refreshing the display panel
* Some minor issues.

- Improve 'ascii export' report (from Netcdf products).

2.0.0 - April 2009

------------------ This update is a major upgrade of the software, including a Mac OS X
version, River&Lake data reading capability, full waveform processing and
plotting, new plotting capabilities, export in GeoTiff, including a Google
Earth export feature, easier export in ASCII, a rethinking of the Graphical
User Interface and of the software packaging, to make it easier to use.

1.1.1 - June 2008

---------------------- Bug fixed : In Brat Gui, Loess filter is never applied. Bug
appears in version 1.1.0.

1.1.0 - December 2007

---------------------- Bug fixed : sometimes the toolbox (GUI) crashes when you
delete an operation.
- Add Jason-2 data processing.
- Add 'General' NetCdf data processing.
- Built under linux with GCC 4.2.2 (new warnings)

1.0.2 - March 2007

------------------ Bug fixed : In X/Y plot display, sometimes the toolbox
crashes when moving the graph after having modified the font
size.
- Disable 'barn' unit.

1.0.1 - December 2006

--------------------- Add high-resolution fields processing.

- Installation process and package creation enhanced.

1.0.0
----- First released version.

Known Issues
============

There are currently no known issues.

Further information
===================

For software upgrades, documentation updates and the on-line

tutorial, including use cases go to:

http://earth.esa.int/brat/ or http://www.altimetry.info/

BRAT has been developed under contract with ESA and CNES.