ABOUT HDF 4.1 Release 3 May 7, 1999 INTRODUCTION This document describes the differences between HDF 4.1r2 and HDF 4.1r3. It is written for people who are familiar with previous releases of HDF and wish to migrate to HDF 4.1r3. The release notes provide more in-depth information concerning the topics discussed here. The HDF 4.1r3 documentation can be found on the NCSA ftp server (ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory: /HDF/HDF/Documentation/HDF4.1r3 First-time HDF users are encouraged to read the FAQ in this release for more information about HDF. Users can also look at the home page for HDF at: http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ If you have any questions or comments, please send them to: hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu CONTENTS - New Features and Changes - Platforms Tested - Known Problems - Acknowledgements New Features and Changes: ======================== o 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. o Many problems have been fixed with the GR interface, including the following: - The GR interface can now read compressed files created with the DFR8 and DF24 interfaces, except for those which were compressed with IMCOMP compression. - The GR interface can read and write images compressed with RLE, GZIP and Skipping Huffman compression methods. - Palettes can now be written and read properly with the GR interface. - 24-bit raster images can now be read by the GR interface. o You can now create an SDS with a name up to 256 characters in length. The previous limit was 64. o HDF now supports IJP JPEG version 6b and Gzip version 1.1.3. o Numerous hdp problems have been fixed, including the following: - hdp no longer fails on an HDF file which contains a vdata that no records have been written to. - hdp no longer fails on the PC and Mactinosh dumping large SDSs. - GR file attributes can now be displayed. - A palette can now be dumped with the GR command. o SDfileinfo no longer returns the wrong number of datasets for old files created with the DFSD interface. o This will be the last release that SunOS 4.1.4 is supported. Check the ./bugs_fixed.txt 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 10.2 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: ============== o 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). o 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. o 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. o 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.