OpenCPN-grib
Improving GRIB plugin for OpenSUSE
Problem
For now, the only way to download new GRIB files is to download them from a web browser. We want to be able to download some GRIB files directly from OpenCPN via the GRIB plugin, that we will modify.
Solution
We'll modify the GRIB plugin to add a feature that will allow to download GRIB files of a specified zone from internet without using a web browser. We'll have to modify the files grib.cpp (mainly the method GRIBUIDialog::CreateControls()) and grib.h (to create constants used by wxWidget and to declare some new methods). The graphic components will be added to the method GRIBUIDialog::CreateControls() and the reaction to the click on these widgets will be processed into newly created methods.
There are two solutions to retrieve GRIB data from internet. The first one is to send a mail to a specialized service, and it'll reply with the requested data as an attachment. This solution has already been implemented in another GRIB improvement. The second one is to retrieve data from a web server by providing the coordinates.
Actually, this solution will be a bit hard to implement, because there are no public GRIB servers. Another software implements this solution, Zygrib, but it uses its own server and its owner doesn't share its source code nor its specifications. So the only solution is to retrieve GRIB data directly from the NOAA's servers.
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