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Release of HDF5-1.4.1

HDF5-1.4.1 is now available for download. The changes in this release are primarily to the HDF5 utilities, and not all features were tested. Therefore, we have not provided the entire pre-compiled binary distribution (libraries, include files, utilities) for the platforms we support. We do provide the pre-compiled utilities as well as the source code for HDF5-1.4.1.

You can obtain the HDF5-1.4.1 software from the HDF5 home page or from the NCSA ftp server:

   ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF5/current/

The HDF5 home page is located at:

   http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/

Documentation is included in the source code and can also be found in:

   ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF5/docs/

New Features and Changes

XML output option for h5dump utility.
A new option --xml to output data in XML format has been added. The XML output contains a complete description of the file, marked up in XML.
The XML conforms to the HDF5 Document Type Definition (DTD), which is available at:
```
       http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/DTDs/HDF5-File.txt
```
The XML output is suitable for use with other tools, including the Java Tools:
```
       http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/java-hdf5-html/
```
h4toh5 utility: conversion of images is fixed
Earlier releases of the h4toh5 utility produced images that did not correctly conform to the HDF5 Image and Palette Specification:
```
       http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc/ImageSpec.html
```
Several required HDF5 attributes were omitted, and the dataspace was reversed (i.e., the height and width of the image dataset were incorrectly described.) For more information, please see:
```
       http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/H5Image/ImageDetails.htm
```
Fixed bug with contiguous hyperslabs not being detected, causing slower I/O than necessary.
Fixed bug where non-aligned hyperslab I/O on chunked datasets was causing errors during I/O.
The RCSID string in H5public.h caused a C++ compiling problem, due to multiple definitions of the same static variable. All occurences of the RCSID definition were removed.

PDF and Postscript versions of the HDF5 documents are available with this release from:

        http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc/PSandPDF/
        ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF5/docs/

Platforms Tested

Due to the nature of this release only the C, C++ libraries and tools were tested.

    AIX 4.3.3.0 (IBM SP powerpc)  xlc 3.6.6
                                  mpcc_r 3.6.6
    Cray T3E sn6711 2.0.5.47      Cray Standard C Version 6.5.0.0
    Cray SV1 10.0.0.8             Cray Standard C Version 6.5.0.0
    FreeBSD 4.3                   gcc 2.95.2
    HP-UX B.10.20                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.10.32.30
    HP-UX B.11.00                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.11.01.20
    IRIX 6.5                      MIPSpro cc 7.30
    IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.3.1m
    Linux 2.2.18smp               gcc-2.95.2
                                  g++ 2.95.2
    OSF1 V4.0                     DEC-V5.2-040
                                  Digital Fortran 90 V4.1-270
    SunOS 5.6                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0
     (Solaris 2.6)
    SunOS 5.7                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0
     (Solaris 2.7)                Workshop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C++ 5.0
    TFLOPS r1.0.4 v4.0            mpich-1.2.1 with local changes
    Windows NT4.0, 2000 (NT5.0)   MSVC++ 6.0
    Windows 98                    MSVC++ 6.0

Known Problems

The h5dump tests may fail to match the expected output in some platforms (e.g. SP2 parallel, Windows) where the error messages directed to "stderr" do not appear in the "right order" with output from stdout. This is not an error.
The --enable-static-exec configure flag fails to compile for HP-UX 11.00 platforms.
The executables are always dynamic on IRIX64 6.5(64 and n32) and IRIX 6.5 even if they are configured with --enable-static-exec.
The shared library failed compilation on IRIX 6.5.
After "make install" or "make install-doc" one may need to reload the source from the tar file before doing another build.
See "Known problems" section for the HDF5 1.4.0 release in the HISTORY.txt file.

Release of Java HDF5 Products

The latest version of the Java HDF5 Products which has been updated to work with HDF5-1.4.1 is now available from:

     http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/java-hdf5-html/

Several new features have been added to H5View in this release:

Can convert an XML file into HDF5 and then open it.
Can convert an HDF4 file into HDF5 and then open it.
Save a file as XML.
Many new editing features.

Please refer to the java-hdf5-html/ web page for a comprehensive list of all of the changes.

More HDF5 tools support XML

This release features an initial set of tools that convert between XML and HDF5 (and vice versa).

The initial tool set includes:

A standard Document Type Definition (DTD)
Java tools to read XML and create HDF5
Addition of XML output to the h5dump utility.

These tools use the standard DTD, and the same XML can be read and written by all the tools.

More information about the tools and XML is available at: