Which subswath should during '--ref-xml ./reference/IW2.xml \' when I have IW2.xml & IW3.xml

[Karthi-Wolf]

I have IW2.xml and IW3.xml in my reference folder,
How should i mention the default --ref-xml ./reference/IW2.xml during dolphin2mintpy prepare step?
I have tried giving --ref-xml ./reference/IW*.xml and got error.

$ dolphin2mintpy prepare --unw-dir **/unwrapped --cor-dir **/interferograms --baseline-dir **/baselines --ref-xml **/reference/IW*.xml --ref-date 20160704 usage: dolphin2mintpy [-h] [--version] [-v] {gui,prepare,generate-config,fix-processor,info} ... dolphin2mintpy: error: unrecognized arguments: **/reference/IW3.xml

[bcankara]

The --ref-xml parameter accepts a single file, not a glob pattern. When the shell expands IW*.xml, it produces two separate arguments:

--ref-xml ./reference/IW2.xml ./reference/IW3.xml

Argparse consumes IW2.xml as the value for --ref-xml, then fails on IW3.xml as an unrecognized argument.

Solution

Pass a single XML file. Any sub-swath XML (IW1, IW2, or IW3) will work — the radar parameters extracted by parse_isce_xml (wavelength, range pixel size, PRF, pass direction, heading, sensing times) are identical across all sub-swaths. By convention, IW2 (the middle swath) is used:

dolphin2mintpy prepare \
    --unw-dir **/unwrapped \
    --cor-dir **/interferograms \
    --baseline-dir **/baselines \
    --ref-xml ./reference/IW2.xml \
    --ref-date 20160704

Note: IW2 is the conventional choice because its startingRange and sensingStart/sensingStop values represent the mid-swath geometry, providing the most representative center_line_utc for tropospheric correction (pyaps3/ERA5). However, any of IW1/IW2/IW3 will produce valid results.