Java HDF Browser: Plans for 2003
January, 2003
Introduction
We propose to complete development of the Java HDF Browser, stableize it,
and put it in maintenance mode. This note presents a proposal for the final
phase of development for the Java HDF browser. The goal is to complete all
features and release a stable version soon after the HDF5-1.6 release. The
'final' release will be V1.3. (Version 1.2 will be released as soon as HDF5-1.4.6
is released.)
The Java products will have the following releases:
- V. 1.2: Feb. 2003
- V 1.3: Q2 2003 -- After HDF5.1.6 and HDF4.1r6 release (estimated, circa June 2003)
- V 1.4 and subsequent: maintenance releases, TBD. Probably after library releases.
Features
>From the bug/feature list, we propose to implement two important features:
configuration with or without HDF4 support, and display of compound
data. A few other miscellaneous features will be added, as time permits.
Configuration without HDF4
Version 1.1 of the HDFview tool requires both HDF4 and HDF5. This will
be changed so that the viewer can be configured with HDF4, HDF5, or both.
There are several ways that this may be controlled by the user:
- The make procedures will allow the tool to be built without one or
the other library. On Unix, the configure script will have arguments to specify
'--without-hdf4', etc., to control what is compiled.
- The tool will look for the code for each library (e.g., jhdf4.jar),
and will automatically configure out a library that is not present. So
users may build with both libraries, but install only what they want to use.
- The automatic installer will have both libraries, but will install
either both libraries or HDF5 only, as the user selects. HDF4 only will not
be an option in the autoinstallers.
This feature is almost completed, so it may appear in the 1.2 release.
Create and Display of Compound Data
The current version of the tool has minmal capability to display data values
in compound data. We will implement the ability to display compound data
in the spreadsheet, at least for simple, non-nested compound data types.
The exact implementation is TBD.
We will investigate creating Vdata and compound datasets, and will implement if feasible.
Note that editing will not be supported for compound data, so it may
or may not be reasonable to create a new dataset if we can't fill it with
data in a reasonable way. This needs to be investigated.
Miscellaneous Features
Several features are believed to be easy to add, and will be included in 1.3. These are:
- Display 3d images in animation
- Rename object from the tree structure (HDF5 only)
We will investigate the display of other complicated datatypes (array, VL dataset), and implement if possible.
Other Changes to the HDFview tool
In addition to bug fixes, there are a few other enhancements that will be made in 1.3.
MacOSX support
We will try to support MacOSX. The primary target is HDF5, and this may be available as soon as version 1.2, depending.
HDF4 support seems to require dynamic libraries. This may or may not be feasible, this ust be investigated.
HDF5-1.6 API changes
The JHI5 layer needs to be updated to pick up library API changes. This has
not been scoped, it is not certain how many or how significant the changes
will be.
Dimension Scales
When dimension scales are available for HDF5, we should add a few features
to the Java viewer. This will probably include similar features for
HDF4.
HDF4 update
If there are any API or other changes in the next release of HDF4, the JHI
will need to be updated. At this time, there are no known changes, but this
has not been checked.
Maintenance Plan
We propose to support the Java HDF viewer with periodic releases. Ideally
we should release the Java tools after every library release, which is 2-3
times per year. We should plan to release at least once per year in any case,
to pick up changes to Java.
High priority bug fixes would be released as patches, if needed.
We do not plan to add new features.
Appendix: Requested Features not to be implemented
The following categories of features have been frequently requested, but will not be implemented.
HDF5 Tables (also Vdata) -labels, etc.
Undo -various
Sort - various
Add Group and all its descendents
H4 H5 Conversion -various
Toolkit/plug-in support
XML support