Old Weather Forum

Sometimes the typed or written characters on a log page are faint and hard to read. Turning on the Image Enhancement option, which is on the Setup Sheet, can make a big difference.

With no Enhancement:



Setting the Gamma to 0.3 with Color:



Setting the Gamma to 0.2 and Greyscale:



After changing an Image Enhancement setting, you have to click on the Get Image button to see the effect.

For people who prefer using a keyboard instead of a mouse, we've made a set of Shortcut keys available for moving around the spreadsheet. If you have loaded the Shortcuts.cfg file, you can see what these Shortcuts are by doing Alt-H. You will be taken to the Help sheet and you should see something like this:

If you need a quick way to zoom in and out, hold down the Control key while scrolling with the mouse scroll wheel.

A couple of months ago, I started a new log book in a spreadsheet and I kept getting an error message that the page was outside the valid range for the specified index. However, it was in the valid range. I reported this "bug" to Michael, but he could not repeat it. However, he figured out I had not pressed the Enter key or the Tab key after typing in the index (A1). Because of that, I saw the index that I had entered, but it was not the index in the system.

Recently, another transcriber had a similar problem. They typed in 600 for the page (B1), but got page 1. When they used the Page Number increment button, they got page 2. Selecting the page cell and pressing the Enter key fixed the problem.

A couple of people have reported that the buttons (e.g., Open User Output Directory) were not working after setting up the system.
A reboot solved the problem.

(Simply exiting and restarting LibreOffice may also fix the problem

The WR Data and WR Plot sheets are handy for checking your data. We have a softkey for going directly to the WR Data sheet: Alt-R. From that sheet you can go to the WR Plot sheet with Ctrl-TAB. Ctrl-TAB just goes from your current sheet to the next one on the right. Ctrl-Shift-TAB moves you to the sheet on the left.

From the WR Plot or WR Data sheets, if you're happy with what you entered, Alt-U will Write your data, Clear your data, load the next Logpage image and then take you to the appropriate cell so you can enter the day.

Alt-LeftArrow or Alt-Home will take you to the first cell with data in the weather block and Alt-RightArrow will take you to the Event area. You set the first cell with data in the weather block with Alt-S.

Finally, if you're like me and you the scale set so the image is fairly large, and you can't see all the weather block at once, when you get near the bottom of the screen, Alt-DownArrow will save the data you entered and shift the image so you can see another eight or ten rows. So, if you have just typed 34 for a temperature, instead of pressing Enter or a down arrow to complete the entry, use Alt-DownArrow.

Some people prefer using a mouse, and that's good too.

We have noticed a feature in Calc that causes AutoPressureFill to slow down. If you enter pressure data too quickly when Pressure Data AutoFill set to Yes, the data are not always written correctly. This is not a problem with our macro, rather it has to do with the internal workings of LibreCalc.

The problem usually shows up as this. You enter 2992 in the first cell, and AutoPressureFill converts it to 29.92. In the next cells you enter 93, 94 and 95. Nomally AutoPressureFill would add 29.93, 29.94 and 29.95 in the next cells. Sometimes though, Calc gets slow, and the cells might look something like this:

29.92
29.93

29.94

or like:
29.92
3

29.95

The slowness occurs randomly, but mostly when an image has been rotated to line up the grids. Unfortunately, most of the images need to be. It happens more often when only one digit is entered: i.e. 1 for 30.01, but it also happens when two or four digits are entered, too.

The way to avoid this is not to enter the next number until your cell is ready to accept a value. The cell is ready when the border around the cell is black. It means being a little slower entering pressure data, if you are using AutoPressureFill. Interestingly enough, using CopyDown does not cause any slowness issues.

Because of these issues, I was curious to see how our pressure data looked, and I analyzed all the Baro pressure data we have collected to date. We are remarkably accurate! I estimate 99.9% correct. I.e. there are around seven errors per year, which has 8760 hours! I did find about three perfect years, but only Monocacy 1930-31 comes to mind, transcribed by Derby1884 and BrianG. So far we have done 40 years of weather data: Bear 18 years, Corwin 3, Monocacy 1, Northland 13, Storis 4 and Thetis 1.

Other than AutoPressureFill issues, most of the errors occurred because of:

• Striking two keys together: 329.92 instead of 29.92
• Misplaced decimal: 2.992 instead of 29.92
• Wrong key: 39.92 instead of 29.92

There are two ways to catch these: Alt-r will bring up the WR Data sheet. A quick scan of that sheet will show you if any values are missing, or look odd. It's easier to see the data there than on the log sheet. Sometimes, with a column of 24 numbers, it can be hard to spot a 20.92 in the middle of several 29.92s. The WR Plot page has a graph which will highlight a value that is really out of line. You can get there from the WR Data sheet with Ctrl-Tab, or just click on the tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

In any case, an error rate of less than 0.1% is FANTASTIC!!!

If you are in a country that uses a comma rather than a period as a decimal separator, you may see some problems.
Go to Tools -> Options, select "Language Settings", then "Languages" and change the locale setting to English (USA).

One of the transcribers has a trick to keep the entered XML data from over-writing the data on the Event page: Place the active cell at the right hand edge of the Event area. Another transcriber found a way to highlight the active cell by changing its colour and making it easier to see. You can do that by going to Tools/Options/Libre Office/Application Colors/Font Colors and choosing a colour that works for you. I chose Yellow.

Note. That method of highlighting the active cell stopped working some time ago. You can still do it if your version of Office is 24.8 or higher. (As of September 2024 that is the latest version.) You then go to Tools/Options/Libre Office/Application Colors. You have to move down the list of options in the box to the options for Spreadsheet and you can change the Cell Focus Color.