This routine in PaPCo core uses the GNU freeware ``wget'' to obtain files from remote sites. It is up to the user to include this feature in his read routine. It has the following header:
PRO papco_get_remote_data, url, filename, download_dir
You need to supply the url (internet address), the filename to get (including path) and the local destination directory for the file. Transfers assume anonymous ftp, but you can of course rewrite this routine to allow for other sites that require user/password information.
It makes sense to use an environmental variable for the URL needed for you
module, and to configure the module with this in its defaults.config
file (see Section B.2.4 for more details).
This routine is self documenting. It provides some widgets to inform the user that files need to be got remotely, and provides some download status and an estimate of the time it will take to transfer.
See the omni module for an example of the implementation of this feature.
NB. This feature is not designed to obtain huge amounts of data over the net, as it will only get the data for the plot you're busy with. It has been made interactive on purpose, so you can't run a batch that will get a whole lot of remote data. If you need a large data set contact the curator of that dataset and arrange to have it sent in a more convenient way, or ftp the data to your site manually outside of PaPCo.