metaf2xml: parse and decode METAR, TAF, SYNOP, BUOY and AMDAR and write as XML

Temperatures in the summary view can also be shown in °F. Decoding of binary BUFR messages now requires Geo::BUFR 1.37+ and ECC BUFR table files from ECWMF. Parsing of METAR and translations were improved. Various other small improvements were made, and a few bugs were fixed.

HTML5 is now used for HTML output and the HTML generation functions of CGI.pm are not used anymore. Escaping special characters was improved when the output is shown as text. Parsing of TAF amendments and various other groups was improved and a few bugs were fixed.

Processing of the WMO code table 0700 was improved. @rn/@rp is used for the temperature. Five more AMDAR (BUFR) groups are processed. noaa.gov, SourceForge and CoD URLs were switched to HTTPS. The dependency of the parser on POSIX (floor) was removed. Various other improvements were made and a few bugs were fixed.

The project web pages are now served via HTTPS (sourceforge.io) instead of HTTP (sourceforge.net). All pages are expected to work as before, requests with HTTP URLs should be redirected to the HTTPS equivalent.

The period g0 for the SYNOP group 54g0sndT (section 3) defaults to the W1W2 period; timeBeforeObs is used instead of hoursFrom, hoursTill (not backwards compatible). Various additional METAR, SYNOP and BUFR groups are recognised, changes for FMH-1 (2017) were incorporated, and a few bugs were fixed.

Perl 5.14.4 or newer (was: 5.10.1) is required. The summary view for clouds now also shows their compass direction. The original message and parts information is included in the data for BUFR messages with multiple observations. Processing of SAO ... [More] AMOS/RAMOS was improved. The new option -P for install.pl can be used to remove the "use lib ..." pragma from scripts. The Makefile was removed. Files are not linked/copied anymore to dedicated web server directories; instead, the Apache configuration uses their original location. A separate Apache configuration is provided for Apache 2.4+. [Less]

BUFR messages with multiple observations are split into one report per observation. Multiple observations of past weather (with different time periods) are allowed (not backwards compatible). A few minor bugs were fixed and several smaller improvements were made.

Starting with the next version, metaf2xml will split BUFR messages with multiple observations (i.e. taken at different times) and generate one report per observation. Therefore the callback function configured via start_cb() will possibly be called ... [More] with data from more than one report during one call of parse_report() or process_bufr(). If the callback function does not process the data immediately (or at the latest at the end of a report) it needs to be made capable of storing multiple reports which need to be processed after parse_report()/process_bufr() finish. [Less]

The URL for fetching data from NOAA/IWS and NOAA/NWS was adapted, the search in data files was optimised and/or fixed. The friction coefficient for the runway state in METAR is allowed to be 0, all values are now decoded.

Processing of decoded BUFR messages was extended. BUFR decoding of section 4 (data) can be skipped depending on fields in BUFR sections 1..3 with Geo::BUFR 1.33+. Multiple observations in an AMDAR message are allowed. The pseudo-BUFR (text) format ... [More] was improved. Missing BUFR values are not reported as unprocessed. The CGI script recognises BUFR report types (IOB, IUA, ...). Decoding of binary BUFR messages was moved to src2raw.pm. Precipitation and cloud information is shown as list in one field instead of using 1..3 fields in the summary. Many smaller improvements were made and a few minor bugs were fixed. [Less]