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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_2.1.1.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

authorative.







Version History

===============



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 is sometimes

      reset if it contains a syntax error.



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

============



+ Due to a conflict between the openSUSE 11.1 Linux operating

system and the InstallBuilder 5.4.13 software used to create the

binary installer for BRAT (the symptom is a "Segmentation Fault"

crash when attempting to run the installer), BRAT cannot

currently be installed on such systems and will have to be

compiled from source instead.







Further information

===================



For software updgrades, 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.