id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	resolution	keywords	cc
551	IMPORTANT: Major overhault of scripts on the ROMS Matlab repository	arango	arango	"I have been working on a major overhaul of Matlab scripts and tools in the ROMS repository for several weeks. Since all the data in ROMS is managed with NetCDF files, some of these scripts use a NetCDF interface to Matlab to process the data. There are several interfaces for Matlab available from third parties. The most widely used interfaces are '''MEXNC''' and '''SNCTOOLS'''.

However, starting with Matlab version '''2012a''', released on Feb 9, 2012, the '''native''' interface to NetCDF is the preferred method for processing NetCDF data in the scripts distributed in the ROMS repository matlab and described here. The '''native''' interface was introduced in Matlab version '''2008b''' for '''NetCDF-3''' type files. The '''NetCDF-4''' support started in version '''2010b'''. The support for '''HDF5''' files was completed in version '''2011a'''. The '''OpenDAP''' support began in version '''2012a'''. If your Matlab version is older than '''2008b''', we highly recommend that you update to the newest version. However, in the basic generic scripts we have switches for older versions to activate either the '''MEXNC''' interface for standard NetCDF files and the '''SNCTOOLS''' interface to process NetCDF files on an '''OpenDAP''' server.

'''Nesting Scripts:'''

This update also includes several new scripts to process ROMS nesting '''contact regions''' and '''contact points'''. The '''contact points''' are processed outside of ROMS and all the connectivity within nested grids is read from an input NetCDF file. This facilitates the configuration of various grid Sub-Classes. It tremendously simplifies the processing of such points in parallel computations. It also gives the user full editing control of the '''contact points'''. The '''contact points''' need to be set-up once for a particular application.

The information about these new scripts is very technical and difficult to explain with plain words.  We need definitions, equations, and a lot of diagrams to explain and illustrate the complexity of ROMS nesting capabilities.  Therefore, we decided to put all that information in  [https://www.myroms.org/wiki WikiROMS] instead of a very long message in this forum.  In particular, we added two new menus to the documentation portal:

  [https://www.myroms.org/wiki/index.php/Nested_Grids Nested Grids]
 
  [https://www.myroms.org/wiki/index.php/Matlab_Scripts Matlab Scripts]"	upgrade	closed	major	Matlab Processing Scripts	Matlab	3.6	Done