xfce4-weather-plugin: symbols & descriptions update

[Harald Judt]

Hi houghi,

Am 22.08.2012 20:56, schrieb houghi:
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 12:27:15PM +0200, Harald Judt wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Unfortunately I will have to postpone the 0.8.2 release a bit, and
>> the translators might get more work to do...
>
> Thanks for the time you put into all this.
>
> Perhaps the question can be best asked in a place where people are that
> know about weather in a technical context. e.g. met.no themselves, if they
> are willing to answer or in amateur weather forums.
>
> They will perhaps know much better the differences and how to imterpret
> them.
>
> All I understand from weather is as a 'user'.
>
> houghi

Then count me as belonging to the users too. However, I'm pretty sure 
that I got the definitions right now. I mean, the forecast service seems 
targeted at typical users, not at (meteorological) scientists. If 
someone proves me wrong concerning my interpretations, I will happily 
correct the mistake. In general, there have been 4 problems with the 
symbols:

1) met.no documentation is sparse.
2) The descriptions were wrong.
3) Some icons were wrong.
4) I have not checked the descriptions for correctness.

In git master, 2) and 3) should be fixed now, 4) is no longer the case 
and 1) is not our business or something we can change.

What I found out recently is that sometimes the default altitude 
returned by the XML data is not right. For example, set "Mount Paget" as 
the location. Altitude returned by the met.no service is 466 meters. Is 
that inside the mountain, where all the diamonds are?

When you use the met.no website to get forecasts, it seems to use the 
correct altitude of 2934 meters above sea level. Frosty. That's a mere 
difference of 2468 meters, not much in astronomical terms. Temperature 
is only about 10°C off, and the weather is a little bit different. Maybe 
I should provide another option for setting the altitude...

BTW: It's quite funny which locations you can get forecasts for. E.g., 
try "Statue of Liberty" or "Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station".

Harald

-- 
`Experience is the best teacher.'