Additional info for User Guide

[tomw]

For the section on "Text (ASCII) Point Data Format", might I suggest that we add a table of symbols that can be used for the "date-time" format ("fmt") specification? I got the following info from the Java API documentation, and it does represent the list of legitimate symbols....sorry about the spacing.... Also, we should make a note that the "yyyy" year symbol can also be "yy" for recent data. It cannot, however, be "y". (Recent issue: a user encoded his date as "9215" instead of "09215", and using the spec "yyDDD" caused the "9215" to be mis-interpreted.)

Code: Select all

 Symbol   Meaning                 Presentation        Example
 ------   -------                 ------------        -------
 G        era designator          (Text)              AD
 y        year                    (Number)            1996
 M        month in year           (Text & Number)     July & 07
 d        day in month            (Number)            10
 h        hour in am/pm (1~12)    (Number)            12
 H        hour in day (0~23)      (Number)            0
 m        minute in hour          (Number)            30
 s        second in minute        (Number)            55
 S        millisecond             (Number)            978
 E        day in week             (Text)              Tuesday
 D        day in year             (Number)            189
 F        day of week in month    (Number)            2 (2nd Wed in July)
 w        week in year            (Number)            27
 W        week in month           (Number)            2
 a        am/pm marker            (Text)              PM
 k        hour in day (1~24)      (Number)            24
 K        hour in am/pm (0~11)    (Number)            0
 z        time zone               (Text)              Pacific Standard Time
 '        escape for text         (Delimiter)
 ''       single quote            (Literal)           '

[bobc]

Hi Tom -

Thanks for the idea, I think a reference to a chart on this page (and similar pages) would be great. A chart similar to this is already contained in the User Preferences - Formats and Data page:

http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/doc/mcv ... ences.html

I will change the formatting of this chart to make it look nicer. I'll add in 'escape for text' and 'single quote' to the chart, as well as the presentation column. Also, I'll add in your comment about the format of the year symbol. Instead of putting this chart on every page that could use it, we are going to link to the User Preferences - Formats and Data page.

Thanks
Bob Carp