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Migrating from Cumulus 1 to MX: Difference between revisions
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→Comparing Cumulus 1 and MX
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Cumulus MX aims to be as compatible with Cumulus 1 as possible with 3 exceptions:
Because the development environment for Cumulus 1 is no longer available, it cannot have any extra functionality added. MX uses standard language C# (pronounced "C Sharp"), an object-oriented programming language created by Microsoft for use with the .NET Framework. It also works with Mono an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime.
== Derived Values ==
Although some weather stations calculate dew point, wind chill, various maxima/minima and so on; Cumulus of all flavours ignores these extras.
All flavours of Cumulus calculate their own maximim and minimum for all relevant weather items, partly because not all weather station supply these and partly because Cumulus was initially designed just to work on a meteorological day running from 9am GMT one day to just before that on next calendar day (and no weather stations work like that).
From the basic temperature, humidity, and wind speed, both flavours work out dew point, wind chill, Canadian Humidex, USA Heat Index, and Australian Apparent Temperature. The actual formulas used for these calculations vary (except for last) between Cumulus 1 and MX (and were not calculated in Cumulus 2). Consequently you may see a discontinuity in your data from that recorded in Cumulus 1 when you move to MX.
==Features and functionality==
One big feature that Cumulus 1 had was a view period screen where you could specify any start and end dates, so it was easy to see a summary for any day in the past, any week in the past, any month, year or season, whatever you needed. MX does not offer anything like this.
Another feature still missing from MX is the "Create Missing" feature that read the standard logs to work out approximate (because not accessing values for every second of day) entries to go in dayfile.txt.
Many other features of Cumulus 1 were missing in the beta MX, as written by Steve Loft.
However, subsequent developments headed by Mark Crossley have now added the majority of the missing features. Unfortunately, there is no list anywhere of all features in Cumulus 1. [[About_Cumulus|About_Cumulus does not cover all features]].
Nor is there a list of features still to be introduced into MX, and initially the documentation on how MX had implemented features it did have was very sparse.
It is still difficult for a Cumulus 1 user to work out the disadvantages of leaving Cumulus 1. There are some obvious advantages in moving to MX, there are a lot of extra new features, there is ongoing support in the forum, and there is prospect of more improvements in the future. Cumulus 1 will never be enhanced.
=== Images ===
Although MX now generates a Moon image, it does not generate all the chart images (replaced by graph drawing from json data) nor the wind images that Cumulus 1 generated.
== Enhancements ==
There are also many features that have been added to MX that were either on the now lost list of enhancements for Cumulus 1 that never got implemented, or are extra functionality to reflect recent changes in weather station features. All quotes below are from the release notes issued by Steve or Mark. Only significant changes to functionality are noted below (for fixes see support forum for full release announcements). There is also version change information here for MX versions.
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