Workspace agendas

At their simplest, workspace agendas uses a set of Workspace methods that combined requires a set of Workspace variables to produce another set of workspace variables.

Workspace agendas are defined in the workspace_agendas.cpp file. The workspace agenda definitions are located in the wsa_data map object. The name of the agenda is the key of the map and the object is a struct with the following fields:

• desc - a description of the agenda as a string.

• outputs - the workspace variables that are produced by the agenda as a list of strings.

• inputs - the workspace variables that are consumed by the agenda as a list of strings.

• enum_options - a list of strings that are the options for the agenda. Defaults to empty.

• enum_defaults - the default enum option for the agenda. Defaults to no-default by being empty.

The two enum-variables, if set, will generate workspace methods that allow setting the agenda to a specific named option. This is useful for agendas that have known “modes”. However, it puts some constraints on the implementation of the agenda. The implementor must implement a method get_MYAGENDA(const std::string&) in the workspace_agenda_creator.h and workspace_agenda_creator.cpp files. Please see existing options in those files for examples.

What qualifies a workspace agenda?

A method or a set of methods must be able to use the workspace agenda to produce a set of desired workspace variables. Generally, if you can keep the number of inputs limited and the number of outputs fixed, you may consider a workspace agenda. However, overpopulating the workspace with agendas is not recommended. So please reuse existing ones as appropriate.

Take ray_path_observer_agenda as an example. The different ways we can define a path from an observer to a background is practically limitless. However, if we are interested in spectral_radiance for some observer and frequency, we know that we just need the background radiation from the background of the observed ray_path and the state of the atmosphere along the path. So a method like measurement_vectorFromOperatorPath(), which takes a set of frequencies and a set of observers, may effectively ignore the complexity of computing the ray_path internally, and leave that to the workspace agenda.

Generated files

The workspace group interface generates auto_wsa.cpp and auto_wsa.h files for the C++ interface. No additional files are generated for the Python binding.

Workspace agenda naming convention

Workspace agendas should be named in snake_case as they are also Workspace groups.

Do not hesitate to implement helpers

Several agendas have helper methods to make the user interface easier. These methods should follow a simple naming convention.

• There are methods that set an agenda to a named option, such as spectral_radiance_space_agendaSet().

• There are methods that compute an agenda based on existing Workspace variables, such as propagation_matrix_agendaAuto().

• There are methods that set and agenda based on multiple options, such as Setup().