MSUI plugins

Flight track import/export

As the planned flight track has to be quickly communicated to different parties having different desired file formats, MSS supports a simple plugin system for exporting planned flights and importing changed files back in addition to the main FTML format. These filters may be accessed from the File menu of the Main Window.

MSS currently offers several import/export filters in the mslib.plugins.io module, which may serve as an example for the definition of own plugins. Take care that added plugins use different file extensions. They are listed below. The CSV plugin is enabled by default. Enabling the experimental FliteStar text import plugin would require those lines in the UI settings file:

"import_plugins": {
    "FliteStar": ["fls", "mslib.plugins.io.flitestar", "load_from_flitestar"]
},

The dictionary entry defines the name of the filter in the File menu. The list specifies in this order the extension, the python module implementing the function, and finally the function name. The module may be placed in any location of the PYTHONPATH or into the configuration directory path.

An exemplary test file format that can be ex- and imported may be activated by:

"import_plugins": {
    "Text": ["txt", "mslib.plugins.io.text", "load_from_txt"]
},
"export_plugins": {
    "Text": ["txt", "mslib.plugins.io.text", "save_to_txt"]
},

The given plugins demonstrate, how additional plugins may be implemented. Please be advised that several attributes of the waypoints are automatically computed by MSS (for example all time and performance data) and will be overwritten after reading back the file.

Available Export Formats:

"export_plugins": {
    "Text": ["txt", "mslib.plugins.io.text", "save_to_txt"],
    "KML": ["kml", "mslib.plugins.io.kml", "save_to_kml"],
    "GPX": ["gpx", "mslib.plugins.io.gpx", "save_to_gpx"]
},

HINT Changes Version 11

We have removed the fs library and the conda-forge package fs_filepicker by version 11. Internally, we are now using Pathlib and os.path.

This has required revisions to imports and, for example, replacement of this syntax in plugins.

Before:

_dirname, _name = os.path.split(filename)
_fs = open_fs(_dirname)
with _fs.open(_name, "wb") as csvfile:

After:

path = Path(filename)
with path.open("wb") as csvfile:

User contributed Plugins

NAVAID Plugin for exporting and importing flight path data

The communication of the flight path data (e.g. with the aircraft authorities) is always individual. For this reason, import and of these data can be done using different pre-defined templates. Alternative plugins could be placed into the settings directory.

Details

It may be required to compute the waypoints in the format WPT012034, where WPT is the NAVAID ID, 012 is the heading and 034 is the distance in nautical miles. This standard is used by several flight authorities. Data for the location of the NAVAID waypoints can be obtained as csv from https://adds-faa.opendata.arcgis.com/search?collection=Dataset The dataset should be named NAVAID_System.csv and placed into the subdir plugins of the config dir. For a given set of waypoints, the navaid export plugin exports an ASCII table containing a column of the so-determined waypoint names. For locations outside the given set of NAVAID points , e.g. over the oceans, the naming convention switches to coordinate based name like xxyyNwwwzzW for latitude xx°yy’N and longitude www°zz’W. This is done if the closest NAVAID waypoint is more than 500 nm.

Installation

1. Copy navaid.py to a PYTHONPATH directory e.g. .config/mss

1. Save the NAVAID waypoint from https://adds-faa.opendata.arcgis.com/search?collection=Dataset select “Pending NAVAID System” and Download as CSV to your local directory .config/mss/plugins/NAVAID_System.csv

1. Add additional modules

   for a global installed MSS:

   pixi global add geomag geopy geographiclib
   

   when you have installed MSS in a Project:

   cd MSS
   pixi shell
   pixi add geomag geopy geographiclib