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                              Newsletter #41
                              May 21, 1999

CONTENTS
 
. HDF 4.1 Release 3 
  A. New Features and Changes               *******************************
  B. Platforms Tested                       * Visit the HDF home page     * 
  C. Known Problems                         * for up-to-date information  * 
  D. Acknowledgements                       * on HDF:                     *     
                                            *   http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ *  
                                            ******************************* 
                                         
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

HDF 4.1 Release 3
=================

HDF 4.1 Release 3 is now available on the NCSA anonymous ftp server
(ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory /HDF/HDF/HDF_Current/.  The HDF 4.1r2
release has been placed under /HDF/HDF/prev-releases/.

A. 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 file in the ./release_notes/ directory of
the source code or pre-compiled binaries for other changes that are not
listed here.


B. 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 
   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


C. 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.


D. 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 in the source code and pre-compiled
binary distributions. 

--------------------------------------------------------------
For questions regarding these or other HDF issues, contact:

   hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu