FGDCMETA.AML Fine Tuning...

Trouble

• When a coverage was in state plane coordinates, the Planar_Distance_Units were correctly 'feet,' however the value for the Semi-major_Axis was given as if the units were meters.
• When a coverage is in state plane coordinates, the tool does not generate the component projection and parameter section appropriate to the zone (Lambert Conformal Conic or Transverse Mercator). I expect the same problem would occur in the case of UTM. The .prj file for a coverage in such a coordinate system is generally pretty sparse, e.g one would specify Projection: StatePlane (sic), and Zone: xxxx, but never populate the Parameters section because Arc supplies them. A zone lookup table for FGDCMETA could help here...

Wants

• Look at the attributes. Do some Statistics on numerical fields and Frequencies on character fields. Try to guess if these are Range, Enumerated, or Unrepresentable Domain attributes, then as appropriate give the Range_Domain_Minimum/Maximum, enumerations and build as much of the Detailed_Description under Entity_and_Attribute_Information as possible. Codeset could not be differentiated from Enumerated in such a scheme, but the rest would be a really good start!
• Place the GRID cell size into Abscissa_Resolution and Ordinate_Resolution.
• Make it possible to just perform the extraction and create the template without starting up the editor so FGDCMETA.AML could be run in batch mode.