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HDF Newsletter 41

May 21, 1999

CONTENTS

HDF 4.1 Release 3

HDF 4.1 Release 3

HDF 4.1 Release 3 is now available on the NCSA anonymous ftp server (ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory:
   ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF/HDF_Current/  
The HDF 4.1r2 release has been placed under /HDF/HDF/prev-releases/.

New Features and Changes

  • HDF 4.1r2 was unable to properly read HDF SDSs created with HDF 3.3x. It did not read the correct SDS names. This problem has been fixed.

  • Many problems have been fixed with the GR interface, including the following:
  • You can now create an SDS with a name up to 256 characters in length. The previous limit was 64.

  • HDF now supports IJP JPEG version 6b and Gzip version 1.1.3.

  • Numerous hdp problems have been fixed, including the following:

  • SDfileinfo no longer returns the wrong number of datasets for old files created with the DFSD interface.

  • This will be the last release that SunOS 4.1.4 is supported.
  • Check the bugs_fixed.txt file in the ./release_notes/ directory of the source code or pre-compiled binaries for other changes that are not listed here.

    Platforms Tested

    
    HDF 4.1 Release 3 has been tested on the following platforms:
    
       Cray J90                  
       Cray T90 (CFP, IEEE)         
       Cray T3E                      
       DEC Alpha/Digital Unix
       DEC Alpha/OpenVMS
       DEC Alpha NT
       VAX OpenVMS
       Exemplar
       FreeBSD
       HP-UX 
       IRIX 6.5
       IRIX64 6.5 (-n32, -64)
       Linux
       Macintosh 
       Solaris
       Solaris x86
       SP
       SunOS 4.1.4
       Windows NT/95
    
    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

  • On Alpha OpenVMS version 6.2, the DF.OLB and MFHDF.OLB Libraries should be created with optimization turned off. Otherwise hdftest fails (the sfgichnk function returns incorrect information).

  • On VAX Open VMS 6.2, the ncgen utility core dumps and an error occurs when reading GR image data with user-defined fill values.

  • If you encounter problems building on a platform, please be sure to check the INSTALL file at the top of the HDF source tree, in case these problems are documented in section 2.5, Platform-specific Notes.

  • On the NT, the hdp utility fails in the debug version when using the list command.
  • Acknowledgements

    Fortner Software LLC ("Fortner") created the reference implementations for the Macintosh and Windows NT/95 of the HDF 4.1r3 library. For more information, please refer to the macintosh.txt and windows.txt files in the ./release_notes/ directory in the source code and pre-compiled binary distributions.