NOAA Weather Radio is a perfect example of why product formats haven't changed. The system was programmed to decode the text products recognizing the standard of writing at the time. This included the use of all caps and periods and slashes as being the only punctuation allowed. For example, the use of ellipses tells the voice processor to pause. They are also used to delineate headlines in products like the Hazardous Weather Outlook.
Sure, we could change everything to being grammatically correct, but think of it in terms of resources. Many systems that used to be manually operated, like NOAA Weather Radio, are now automated. So, a lot of time, money, and personnel would have to be dedicated to reprogramming all the systems to recognize, decode, and allow the changes. That programming would have to be debugged, shipped to each office, and then installed. Scheduling of installations is another thing all together. I'm sure there are plenty of systems used in the private sector that would have to be modified, too. In the end, a change like this offers no operational improvements. In my opinion, those resources would be better spent on things like phased array, deploying dual-pol, or AWIPS 2.
On a personal note, I'm really looking forward to the next FROPA. We need some more TSRA in the Texas Panhandle to get some more water in MRIT2. We could just do with the SVR, TOR, FFW.
) I was stationed at MCAF Quantico. We would send our obs and TAF's via COMEDS and it would sometimes take up to two minutes for Carswell to pick them up (all the time with us praying, "Please don't let me make the AXXX!.) Since they were already coded, we didn't have to worry about shortening them up. But that's an indication of how slow things still were even only 20 years ago.
