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                            Newsletter #121
                             June 21, 2011 

CONTENTS
 . Release of HDF 4.2.6 
 . Dropping support for g77 and g95 compilers in HDF4
 . Soliciting feedback on dropping VS 2008 project files
 . The HDF Group joins the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
 . HDF5DotNet - C++/CLI Wrappers for HDF5-1.8.7

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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:

   http://www.hdfgroup.org/downloads/index.html#hdf4

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

   http://www.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:

  http://www.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. 



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   help@hdfgroup.org