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 New Version Information for the Weather Utility
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:Copyright: (c) 2006-2020 Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org>. Permission
            to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software is
            granted under terms provided in the LICENSE file distributed
            with this software.

.. contents::

2.4 Release
-----------
This is planned to be the last release supporting Python 2; starting
with the 3.0.0 release, this software will only be usable with Python
3.5 and later.

Refreshed correlation sets and data sources including updating to 2019
US Census locations and incorporating public domain airport information
from the wonderful ourairports.com community, stopped using the long
defunct metar.tbl and zonecatalog.curr.tar files, switched to HTTPS
protocol since all the URLs had started redirecting from HTTP to HTTPS
anyway, added functionality for fetching forecasts from HTML pages where
they're wrapped in preformat tags and included a new forecast zone for
the Hong Kong Observatory using this, fixed a few bugs when running
under recent Python 3 versions.

2.3 Release
-----------
Fixed a regression in the correlate function which reintroduced the
wrong (old) URLs for zone-specific data sources, and corrected the
entries in the zones file accordingly.

2.2 Release
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Fixed a bug where the setpath search order was effectively being
reversed.

Updated correlation data is included based on newer 2015 Census data and
2016 NWS station and zone lists.

2.1 Release
-----------
The old http://weather.noaa.gov/pub site was deprecated and as of August
23 subsequently removed from service. Correlation data files have been
updated to use the working http://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov URL instead.

Updated correlation data is included based on newer 2014 Census data.

The correlation data rebuilding process has been improved and more
thoroughly documented.

Radian floats in correlation data are now truncated to 7 decimal places,
significantly reducing rounding error fuzz against future data file
updates.

The /etc/weather/weatherrc file mentioned in documentation is now
properly read.

2.0 Release
-----------
The 2.0 release involves a major rewrite of the underlying code and
addition of large volumes of previously-unneeded location correlation
data. In the Spring of 2011 the USA NOAA/NWS made significant changes to
the way they organized and published forecast data such that it could
no longer be supported by design assumptions inherent within this
utility. Attempts were made to preserve backward compatability with 1.x
command-line usage and configuration file formats where possible, but
some regressions are unfortunately unavoidable. The aurl, city, flines,
furl, id, murl, st and zones options have been removed. Minimal logic
was retained to recognize and continue supporting limited use of city,
id and st in configuration files, though these are deprecated for
eventual removal in a future release.

On a positive note, this provided an opportunity to design out
some reported bugs and add in numerous requested features. Highlights
include:

 * Because NOAA/NWS now treats forecast data in the same way as alerts,
   the alert reporting features are now much better integrated and no
   longer considered a beta test.

 * The lack of memorable alert/forecast zone coding in the new scheme
   drove development of intelligent search functionality, allowing users
   to find stations and zones through a variety of methods like place
   names, IATA/FAA/ICAO/FIPS/ZIP codes and even raw coordinates.

 * To reduce unnecessary load on NOAA/NWS servers, the utility now
   caches retrieved data for a configurable period of time.

 * Airport code lists are no longer maintained in configuration (though
   they are still easily overridden through configuration), and are
   instead now separately managed in a manner similar to the other
   pregenerated correlation data.

Worth noting, however, is that the new forecast data publication format
(now essentially identical to the alert format) is all-caps freeform
prose, and not easily parsed as a result. Due to the lengthy nature of
this output, piping it through a pager is highly recommended.
