All great suggestions!
And one more: often the quickest & easiest way to convey a
question/problem to others is to:
1) Open a fresh Ferret session,
2) execute a BRIEF, REPRODUCIBLE sequence of commands in Ferret that
demonstrates the problem,
3) copy all the text from your terminal (including the header lines that
came up when you started Ferret) into your email,
4) attach any plots that you generated, using FRAME/FILE=plot.gif, to your
email.
For example:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: incorrect contours for FILL with missing data
NOAA/PMEL TMAP
FERRET v5.80
Linux(g77) 2.4.18 - 01/03/05
9-Jun-05 16:16
yes? use coads_climatology
yes? save/clobber/file=sst.nc/y=0/x=130e:80w sst
LISTing to file sst.nc
yes? can dat/all; use sst.nc
yes? set v left; shade/x=120e:80w sst !this works.
yes? set v right; fill/x=120e:80w sst !but this gives only 1 contour!!!
yes? frame/file=plot.gif !plot is attached to this email
--------------------------------------------------------------------
That way the problem-solver will have all the machine & Ferret-version
information, can simply paste the commands into their own Ferret session,
and can directly compare their output with yours.
In the above example, notice that we've used one of the standard datasets
(coads_climatology) that comes with Ferret. That way it's easy for others
to reproduce the problem. The three most useful datasets for this purpose
are:
coads_climatology -- for general/climatology/modulo issues
levitus_climatology -- for depth/z/non-time issues
monthly_navy_winds -- for timeseries/vector issues
Cheers,
Andrew
On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Ansley Manke wrote:
> Hi Billy,
> I second the motion. I've incorporated the suggestions and a couple of
> my own to a new bit on the Mail Archives page -
>
>
> Suggestions for posting questions
>
> * Don't hesitate to ask "simple" questions. If you've looked in the
> documentation and are still wondering about something, others
> probably are too. (See the Support Policy <../ferret_support.html>
> page for more ideas on how to find Ferret answers.)
> * Describe your question in the subject line. A subject line of
> "ferret question: diurnal cycle" will receive more answers than
> "ferret question", as people will recognize a topic they know
> about. If you put "ferret" or "ferret_users" in the subect line,
> users will know it's from the Ferret list.
> * In your question, please say what version of Ferret and what
> operating system you are using. This information is in the header
> lines that appear when you start Ferret.
> * Go ahead and answer others' questions, using "Reply to All" so
> that your answer is posted to the list. The questions and answers
> are what makes the list such a useful resource. A partial answer
> or some ideas that might help are fine.
>
> Sometimes we send messages back and forth with somebody, trying to
> understand the question and find an answer. If you do this, please make
> sure somebody writes back to the Users List with the final resolution of
> the problem, so it's there for other users, present and future.
>
> Ansley
>
> William S Kessler wrote:
>
> >At the risk of exposing myself for the curmudgeon [grognon] that I am,
> >can I suggest that people writing to this group use descriptive subject
> >headers? Subjects such as "problem", "question", etc aren't very
> >helpful. Better subjects would result in more replies, since more people
> >would recognize a situation they have some knowledge of. And considering
> >that many of us search the history of this e-mail list for hints, better
> >subject headers would be very useful.
> >
> >Humph! Grump grump grump!
> >
> >Billy K
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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