NCSA HDFView 2.3 ------------------ 1) What it is 2) Features 3) Limitations 4) System requirements 5) Installation 6) The files you should get 7) For further information ______________________________________________________________________ 1) What it is The HDFView is a Java-based tool for browsing and editing NCSA HDF4 and HDF5 files. HDFView allows users to browse through any HDF4 and HDF5 file; starting with a tree view of all top-level objects in an HDF file's hierarchy. HDFView allows a user to descend through the hierarchy and navigate among the file's data objects. The content of a data object is loaded only when the object is selected, providing interactive and efficient access to HDF4 and HDF5 files. HDFView editing features allow a user to create, delete, and modify the value of HDF objects and attributes. 2) Features HDFView version 2.3 fixed bugs from version 2.2 and added a few new and enhanced features. It includes all the major features of H5View and is used to replace the HDFView. The browsing and editing features of HDFView are listed below. Details of the features are discussed in their related chapters of the HDFView Users Guide. 2.1) Browsing Features Display data with optional GUI modules. Support netCDF and fits file format with read-only. Animation display of 3D images. Display HDF5 user block in text, oct, hex and etc. Option to show char dataset as text. Display nested compound dataset. Show multi-dimension compound dataset. Show text attributes and text dataset in selected fonts. Change image brightness Open multiple HDF4 or HDF5 files. Display file hierarchy in a tree and allow users to navigate among the file's data objects. Show dataset as an image, a table or text. Allow users to select a subset of dataset to display. Show attributes and other general information of data objects. Display line plot for selected table data, and histogram for selected image area. Display simple compound dataset (non-nested compound datatype) in a table. Support simple image manipulation: zooming image in/out, flipping image horizontally or vertically, and showing palette for index RGB image. Allow displaying any of three dimensions of a multiple dimension dataset. Allow users to specify stride of dataset selection. Allow users to selection select fields/members of VData/compound dataset to display. Display file information, such as file size, total number of datasets. Open file as read only. Show preview image for selecting subset. Support multiple color tables for HDF5 images. Display color table in separate red/green/blue lines. Quick view of metadata. View variable-length datasets (in compound or nested compound) View ENUM dataset View compound/varaible-length attributes Show indicator of attributes (objects with attribute attached) Slider bar for modifying image threshold range Support for HDF5-SRB (object level access to remote files on distributed system) Support for compound datatypes containing 2D arrays (or greater) Create/display named datatypes in HDF5 Create link in hdf5 Improve ability to manipulate palette Select row/colunm data as X axis for xy plot in the table view 2.2) Editing Features Add more user options such as default starting directory or file extension. Rename HDF5 object. Edit HDF5 compound dataset. Change and save user options such as recent files, delimiter, and font size. Save current file into the same type (HDF4 to HDF4, HDF5 to HDF5). Add/delete object in the file (no deletion for HDF4). Copy/paste object in the same file. Copy/paste object between files of the same file format (HDF4 to HDF4, HDF5 to HDF5). Add/delete a group and all its decendents (no deletion for HDF4). Modify and save data values in spreadsheet. Create new dataset with simple datatype such as SDS, atomic data array. Copy/paste data values of dataset. Save single dataset into ASCII text file. Save a single image to JPEG file. Add/delete attribute (no deletion for HDF4). Modify and save attibute value. Convert JPEG image file into HDF4/HDF5 file. Save HDF4/HDF5 image into JPEG image file. Save single data object into HDF file. Update datasets of references when a file is saved into a new file. Import data values from text file. Create new dataset/image out of existing dataset/image. Modify string dataset. Simple math calculation and statistic summary. Create empty image with default image attributes. Modify image color table. Create empty HDF5 compound dataset. Add and modify user blocks. 3) Limitations The current implementation of HDFView has the following limitations. HDFView does not support undo operation; all the changes will go to the physical file, and the editing results cannot be recovered. Deleting object/attribute in HDF4 is not supported. HDFView does not support conversion between HDF4 and HDF5. HDFView supports only indexed image with RGB color model or 24-bit true color image. It does not support other color models such as CMYK and HSV. Opening a large image or dataset may cause an "out of memory" error due to the limitations of the Java virtual machine. HDFView is implemented in JavaTM 2 Platform. It builds and runs on jdk1.4.x. It does not buid on jdk1.3.x or earlier version. It may run on jdk1.3.x but it is not tested on jdk1.3.x. 4) System requirements The HDFView is distributed in two forms: No_VM_bundled and VM_bundled. The No_VM_bundled distribution does not contain the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) while the VM_bundled distribution bundles the JRE. To run HDFView with No_VM_bundled distribution, JDK1.4.x is required. The HDFView does not compile on jdk1.3.x or earlier version. It may run on jdk1.3.x but it is not tested on jdk1.3.x. Download Java 2 Platform at: JavaTM 2 Platform, Standard Edition (Windows, Solaris, Linux) JavaTM 2 Platform for SGI HDFView 1.3 has been built and tested on the following platforms: Linux Solaris Windows 95/98/2000/NT/XP MAC OS X The HDFView uses the HDF4 and HDF5 Java Native Interfaces, which calls the HDF4 and HDF5 library. These native interfaces are included in the distribution. For more information (source and pre-built) on the HDF4/5 Java Native Interface, visit website at http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/hdf-java-html/JNI/ 5) Installation Install on Unix After downloading installation file and, cd to the directory where you downloaded the installer. At the prompt type: sh ./hdfview-xxx.bin where xxx is the Unix OS name such as solaris, linux or irix. The installer will guide you to select the Java Virtual Machine and HDFView home directory (where you want to install the HDFView). Install on Windows After downloading, double-click hdfview-windows.exe The installer will guide you to select the Java Virtual Machine and HDFView home directory (where you want to install the HDFView). After installing, you can lanuch the HDFView from Start -> Program Files -> NCSA HDFView 6) The files you should get For Windows Readme.txt - This readme file. Copyright - The copyright information. hdfview.exe - The excutable program to start the HDFView docs/UsersGuide - The HDFView User's Guide jre/ - The Java 2 Runtime Environment: Sun JRE 1.3.1 lib/ jhdf.jar - The jar file containing all the classes of the Java wrapper of the HDF 4 library. jhdf5.jar - The jar file containing all the classes of the Java wrapper of the HDF 5 library. jhdfobj.jar - The jar file containing common Java interfaces/classes of the HDF data objects. jhdf4obj.jar - The jar file containing the HDF4 data objects. It is required only when HDF4 support is installed. jhdf5obj.jar - The jar file containing the HDF5 data objects. It is required only when HDF5 support is installed. jhdfview.jar - The jar file containing allthe Java classes of the GUI components of the HDFView. lib/win jhdf.dll - The dynamic link library of HDF 4. It is required only when HDF4 support is installed. jhdf5.dll - The dynamic link library of HDF 5. It is required only when HDF5 support is installed. samples/ - Sample HDF 4 and HDF 5 files. UninstallerData/ - Files for uninstalling the HDfView. For Unix Readme.txt - This readme file. Copyright - The copyright information. hdfview - The shell script to start the HDFView docs/UsersGuide - The HDFView User's Guide jre/ - The Java 2 Runtime Environment: Sun JRE 1.3.1 lib/ jhdf.jar - The jar file containing all the classes of the Java wrapper of the HDF 4 library. jhdf5.jar - The jar file containing all the classes of the Java wrapper of the HDF 5 library. jhdfobj.jar - The jar file containing common Java interfaces/classes of the HDF data objects. jhdf4obj.jar - The jar file containing the HDF4 data objects. It is required only when HDF4 support is installed. jhdf5obj.jar - The jar file containing the HDF5 data objects. It is required only when HDF5 support is installed. jhdfview.jar - The jar file containing allthe Java classes of the GUI components of the HDFView. lib/(solaris, linux, or irix-6.5) jhdf.so - The dynamic link library of HDF 4. It is required only when HDF4 support is installed. jhdf5.so - The dynamic link library of HDF 5. It is required only when HDF5 support is installed. samples/ - Sample HDF 4 and HDF 5 files. UninstallerData/ - Files for uninstalling the HDfView. For Mac OS X Readme.txt - This readme file. Copyright - The copyright information. hdfview - The shell script to start the HDFView docs/UsersGuide - The HDFView User's Guide jre/ - The Java 2 Runtime Environment: Sun JRE 1.3.1 lib/ jhdf.jar - The jar file containing all the classes of the Java wrapper of the HDF 4 library. jhdf5.jar - The jar file containing all the classes of the Java wrapper of the HDF 5 library. jhdfobj.jar - The jar file containing common Java interfaces/classes of the HDF data objects. jhdf5obj.jar - The jar file containing the HDF5 data objects. jhdfview.jar - The jar file containing allthe Java classes of the GUI components of the HDFView. lib/macosx libjhdf5.jnilib - The dynamic link library of HDF 5. samples/ - Sample HDF 4 and HDF 5 files. UninstallerData/ - Files for uninstalling the HDfView. 7) For further information General information about HDF and HDF4 and HDF5 are available at: http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu Information about the HDFView tool and related products is available http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/hdf-java-html Questions and feedback may be sent to: hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu