xtide − Harmonic tide clock and tide predictor (interactive client)
xtide [-l ‘‘location name’’]
XTide is a package that provides tide and current predictions in a wide variety of formats. Graphs, text listings, and calendars can be generated, or a tide clock can be provided on your desktop.
XTide can work with X-windows, plain text terminals, or the web. This is accomplished with three separate programs: the interactive interface (xtide), the non-interactive or command line interface (tide), and the web interface (xttpd).
xtide is the interactive X-windows client for XTide 2. Although in reality it accepts many command line options, you should not need to use them; everything can be done interactively. Just run xtide and point and click your way to whatever you need. If you get stuck, click on a ‘?’ button for on-line help.
For a complete discussion of the command line options and a detailed explanation of the interactive interface, please see the verbose documentation at http://www.flaterco.com/xtide/.
Unless a configuration file /etc/xtide.conf is supplied, you must set the environment variable HFILE_PATH to point to the harmonics files that should have been installed along with the xtide program. Example:
export HFILE_PATH=/usr/local/share/xtide/harmonics.tcd
If a configuration file is used, the first line should consist of the colon-separated list of harmonics files (e.g. the HFILE_PATH line above without the "export HFILE_PATH=" part). The environment variable takes precedence over the configuration file. Also, note that on Debian systems the tidal harmonics data file are stored in /usr/share/xtide instead of /usr/local/share/xtide as used above.
If the optional World Vector Shoreline files have been installed, the path to those files can be supplied in the WVS_DIR environment variable or as the second line of the configuration file.
Set the environment variable XTIDE_DEFAULT_LOCATION to the name of your favorite place if you want to skip the location-choosing step.
-l ‘‘location name’’
Specify a location for tide predictions. When given to the interactive client, this causes it to start a tide clock for the specified location instead of launching a location chooser on startup. This is useful for starting a tide clock automatically when you log on. Multiple uses of -l will result in multiple tide clocks.