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Newsletter #121
June 21, 2011

Release of HDF 4.2.6

We are please to announce the release of HDF 4.2.6. It can be obtained from the "HDF Downloads" page:

   https://support.hdfgroup.org/downloads/index.html#hdf4

or directly from the "Obtaining The HDF Software" page:

   https://support.hdfgroup.org/release4/obtain.html

The documentation for HDF 4.2.6 is not yet available, but will be soon.

Important new features and changes in this release include:

Prior to HDF version 4.2.6, a zero could be successfully passed in for the count parameter of SDsetattr, but a delayed failure would then occur when SDend was called (which could potentially cause file corruption). As of 4.2.6, SDsetattr will fail when the count is zero.

A user suggested the following workaround for C applications that need to create an attribute containing a zero-length character string: the C application can pass in a single character string containing the '\0' character for the value and 1 for the count.
Many new functions were added to this release:
- The Vnattrs2, Vattrinfo2, and Vgetattr2 functions were added to work around limitations of Vnattrs, which is not aware of attributes created by pre-Vsetattr methods.
- Numerous functions were added to support the HDF4 Mapping project.
- The VSgetexternalfile and SDgetexternalfile functions were added to provide information on an external file.
CMake support was added.
The HDF tests will no longer fail if building HDF4 with different versions of the JPEG library.
A few fixes were made to hdp and hdiff.
The HDF Reference Manual is now available in HTML format.

Please be sure to see the HDF 4.2.6 release notes for complete details on what has changed in this release:

  https://support.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF/HDF_Current/src/hdf-4.2.6-RELEASE.txt

Dropping support for g77 and g95 compilers in HDF4

HDF version 4.2.6 is the last version of the HDF4 library to be tested with g77 and g95 as the Fortran 77 compilers. Both of these compilers will be removed from the tested compilers list. Instead, gfortran, which is part of the standard GCC package and is actively maintained, will be the default Fortran compiler on systems where GNU compilers are used by default (such as Linux).

Soliciting feedback on dropping VS 2008 project files

After the next release of HDF4, scheduled for February 2012, we are planning to drop support for VS 2008 project and batch files and move to CMake only. We are targeting the summer of 2013 for this change, but are soliciting feedback from users before we make any changes. Please let us know your comments on this!

The HDF Group joins the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

We are pleased to announce that The HDF Group has joined the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) (http://www.opengeospatial.org/) as an Associate Member.

HDF has been used in geospatial data storage for most of its 22 year existence. Over that time there have been many requests to standardize in how geospatial entities are described and stored in HDF. Membership in the OGC provides a great opportunity for us to work towards greater standardization and hence improve the experience of everyone who encounters geospatial data in either of the HDF formats.

We look forward to the opportunities to collaborate on OGC initiatives, learn more about geospatial markets and technologies, and develop relationships with other consortium members.

HDF5DotNet - C++/CLI Wrapper for HDF5-1.8.7

For those who may not have been aware of it, a new version of HDF5DotNet, built with HDF5-1.8.7, is available from the following location:

    http://hdf5.net/

HDF5DotNet is a C++/CLI wrapper (of a subset) of HDF5 library APIs in a .NET assembly for use by .NET applications. This version is CLS compliant, supports .NET 64-bit, and includes wrappers for more HDF5 functions.

- - Last modified: 14 October 2016