Airports package
The airports package displays airport locations and information on the map.
It also displays topographic images from the Delorme topo CD, photo images from
terraserver.com, and airport
description pages from www.airnav.com
in a separate window.
The Airports package will scan the parameter file for a line of form:
'Airports: dir'. When the user requests information about an airport by double
clicking its location on the map, visky will look for images and text
information in directory dir to display in the airport
window, described below. If dir does not have the required files, visky
will automatically download the images and text files from
ftp://ftp.tkgeomap.org/pub/airports.
Automatic downloading requires that Expect - a Tcl extension, be available.
Expect is available from
http://expect.nist.gov.
If Expect is not installed or does not work, the images and text files for
the states of interest must be downloaded by anonymous ftp ahead of time.
Run 'ftp ftp.tkgeomap.org'. Log in as anonymous with an email
address as the password. Change directory (cd) to /pub/airports.
There is a directory for each state which should be duplicated in dir
for the information to be available. Users on slow connections will probably
have to make the directories manually and download the files individually
in several sessions. If a fast connection is available, it will be easiest
to download the tar ball(s) for the state(s) of interest and extract the
files in dir with a command like:
gunzip -c Alabama.tar.gz | tar xf -
Make sure the above command is executed in dir.
The airport window has two displays: The upper display
shows topographic and photo images obtained from the Delorme TopoUSA CD.
The lower display shows information obtained from
www.airnav.com, if
available.
The Airports package also creates an Airport menu with the following
selections:
- Show airports - puts a dot at each airport. The text display below
the map shows the name of the airport nearest the cursor,
followed by a string of abbreviations in parentheses
indicating what additional information is available.
2 means a 2D topo image is available. 3 means a
3D image is available. P means a photo is available.
D means an airnav.com descriptor is available. Thus,
(23PD) indicates all images and the airnav description
are available. Upon selection, this menu becomes
Hide airports.
- Find airport - creates a dialog box where the user can enter a text
pattern. Visky will perform a case insensitive
regular expression search for airport names matching the
pattern. If it finds one, the airport is put at the
center of the map with the + marker over it. If
several airport names match the pattern, the names are
displayed in a list box and the user selects the desired
airport by double-clicking it. Note: the list box has no
scroll bar - the viewed region is adjusted by dragging.
- Dot size - selects dot size in pixels for displaying airports.
default sets the value to that chosen in the
'Widget->Dot size' menu.
- Color - accesses a dialog box for adjusting airport color.
Color selections are saved in file
$HOME/.visky/colors/Airports.tcl, which is
used to set colors next time the program runs. When
visky starts, it backs up this file to
$HOME/.visky/colors/Airports.tcl.bu, which can be
used to revert to the original colors if desired.
The image display window has a menu at the top left that selects between
Topo2D, Topo3D, and Photo images. Pushing the Center button puts
the displayed airport at the center of the map with the + marker over it.
Back to visky home page