Magics++ is the latest generation of the ECMWF's Meteorological plotting software MAGICS. Although completely redesigned in C++, it is intended to be as backwards-compatible as possible with the Fortran interface. The contour package was rewritten and no longer depends on the CONICON licence.

Besides its programming interfaces (Fortran and C), Magics++ offers MagML, a plot description language based on XML aimed at automatic web production.

The library supports the plotting of contours, wind fields, observations, satellite images, symbols, text, axis and graphs (including boxplots).

Data fields to be plotted may be presented in various formats, for instance GRIB 1 and 2 code data, Gaussian grid, regularly spaced grid and fitted data. Input data can also be in BUFR and NetCDF format or retrieved from an ODB database.

The produced meteorological plots can be saved in various formats, such as PostScript, EPS, PDF, GIF, PNG, SVG and KML.

Roadmap

Work is continuing to add new formats and features to support rich interactive web displays with Magics++. Currently we have much feedback on MagML and we plan to incorporate this into our development.

21.11.2007