[IGSMAIL-3058]: Hatanaka RINEX Conversion

[Michael Scharber]

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IGS Electronic Mail      16 Oct 12:18:59 PDT 2000      Message Number 3058
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Author: Michael Scharber

For a variety of reasons SOPAC has chosen to adopt the Hatanaka,
or compressed RINEX, file compression strategy for ALL of its
RINEX Observation files.  Over the coming months SOPAC will be
converting all of its older RINEX Observation files from standard
unix-compressed ASCII files to Hatanaka-unix-compressed ASCII
files.

This conversion process will ensue on a year-by-year (data-wise)
basis, beginning with 1998 RINEX files on the SOPAC archive and
progressing to other years once 1998 is finished.  Also, in the near
future SOPAC will begin providing both standard unix-compressed
and Hatanaka-unix-compressed versions of "current" RINEX Observation
files on a daily basis...with a lag period of a few months before 
removing the standard unix-compressed copies.  Over the course of the next
year the lag will be shortened to a smaller and smaller amount of
time, ultimately ending in the cessation of standard unix-compressed
RINEX Observation files from SOPAC's public archive.

In order to help make this transition as painless for our users as
possible we will be posting notice messages in the major directories
of SOPAC's archive corresponding to the Hatanaka conversion process and
will be maintaining a status page on our web site outlining our conversion
schedule and current projects.

SOPAC is aware that the adoption of the Hatanaka compression scheme for
RINEX Observation file serving and sharing (at SOPAC) has been a long time
coming. We apologize for significant delay and hope that our transition is
as pain-free as possible, both for SOPAC and it's users.

Please send questions or concerns to archive at josh.ucsd.edu.

Best Regards,

Michael

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      	Michael Scharber
	Scripps Institution of Oceanography
	Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics
	8785 Biological Grade
	IGPP Room 4212
	La Jolla, CA 92037

	mscharber at josh.ucsd.edu
	(858)534-7692
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