HDF Newsletter 30

March 17, 1998

CONTENTS

HDF 4.1 Release 2

 HDF 4.1 Release 2 is now available on the NCSA anonymous ftp server (ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory /HDF/HDF/HDF_Current/. The HDF 4.1r1 release has been placed under HDF/HDF/prev_releases/.

New Features and Changes

  • Data chunking is now supported with the GR interface. New routines for creating and manipulating chunked GR images have been added. Please refer to the ./release_notes/new_functions.txt file and HDF Reference Manual for information on using chunked GRs.

  • In previous releases, many C routines existed for which there were no Fortran counterparts. With HDF 4.1r2, we have added a Fortran routine for most C routines. Please check the ./release_notes/new_functions.txt file for a list of the new functions added to HDF.

  • This is the first release in which the Java Products (the Java-based HDF Viewer (JHV) and the Java HDF interface (JHI)) are incorporated in the HDF release itself. For information on the Java Products, please refer to the Java Products web page off of the HDF home page (http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/java-hdf-html/).

  • In the SD interface, HDF now defaults to ONLY storing the new version of the dimension representation added in HDF 4.0r1.

    When the dimension representation was changed in 4.0r1, the HDF library defaulted to include both the new and old dimension representations in an HDF file. Now, this new dimension representation is stored by default. The SDsetdimval_comp function can be used to change the dimension representation stored.

    Following is a detailed description of the difference between the new and old representations:

  • Platforms dropped with this release: Cray Y-MP, T3D, and Linux (a.out)

  • Extensive changes have been made to the Reference Manual and User's Guide. The updated Reference Manual is available with this release. The updated User's Guide will be available in the near future.

    • Platforms Tested

     HDF 4.1 Release 2 has been tested on the following platforms: 
    
   Cray T90 (CFP, IEEE)            IRIX 6.2 
   Cray T3E                        IRIX64 6.4 (-n32, -64)
   DEC Alpha/Digital Unix          Linux (elf) 
   Exemplar                        Solaris  
   FreeBSD                         Solaris x86 
   HP-UX 9.03                      SP2 
   HP-UX 10.2                      SunOS 
   IRIX 5.3
    ** The Windows NT/95, Macintosh, Dec Alpha OpenVMS and VAX OpenVMS releases are not available with this release of HDF4.1r2. Separate releases for these platforms will be available in the near future.

    For more information on the platforms that were tested and for which we provide pre-compiled binaries, please refer to the following web page (accessible from the HDF home page): 

         http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/platforms.html

    Known Problems:

  • Writing n-bit datasets from FORTRAN with the SD interface is not working.

  • SDgetchunkinfo does not return compression coding or modeling type.

  • Using both fill-values and compression on SD datasets is not currently working; don't use one or the other.

  • Dumping compressed Vdatas with vshow or hdp is not working.

  • Reading or writing compressed images with the GR interface is not working.

  • With the GR interface, you cannot create a raster image without writing data to it.

    • Important Fixes

  • HDF no longer core dumps when reading a NetCDF file.

  • HDF now supports little-endian conversion for VAX and Dec Alpha OpenVMS.

  • The problems that occurred on the Cray with HDF 4.1r1 have been corrected.

    • See the ./release_notes/bugs_fixed.txt file for more information on bugs fixed in this release.

    Acknowledgements

     Fortner Software LLC ("Fortner") created the reference implementations for Macintosh and Windows NT/95 of the HDF 4.1r2 library, which will be available in the near future. For more information, please refer to the macintosh.txt and windows.txt files in the ./release_notes/ directory.