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                          Newsletter #55
                          September 12, 2000


CONTENTS
                                            *******************************
. New Release of HDF5 Java Products         * Visit the HDF home page     *
  - H5View: *New Features*                  * for up-to-date information  *
  - h5gen: XML to HDF5 (*New Product*)      *                             *
  - Java HDF5 Interface (JHI5) now          *  http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/  *
      uses HDF5-1.2.2                       *                             *
                                            *******************************
. Revisions to the HDF5 XML Document
    Type Definition (DTD)
 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


New Release of HDF5 Java Products
=================================

A new release of the HDF5 Java Products is now available from: 

   http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/java-hdf5-html/

See below for details on what is new with this release. 

H5View: *New Features*
----------------------

Version 2.0 of the H5View tool introduces visual editing capabilities. The
editing features include:

   * Create a new file with options of file creation properties.
   * Save the current file into a new file. The new file will not contain
     "inaccessible" (i.e., deleted) objects from the old file.
   * Insert a data object from one file into another file.
   * Add/delete HDF5 objects (Groups, Datasets) from the file.
   * Modify and save data values from the spreadsheet.
   * Create a new dataset out of an existing dataset.
   * Copy/insert a dataset and preserve its properties.
   * Copy and paste data between datasets.
   * Import data from a text file to fill the data array.
   * Create a new image out of an existing image.
   * Delete an image from the file.
   * Create/delete attributes.
   * Change the value of an attribute.

h5gen: XML to HDF5 (*New Product *)
-----------------------------------

The h5gen utility reads an XML description of an HDF5 file and 
generates the corresponding HDF5 file. The XML input must conform
to the HDF5 Document Type Definition (DTD)
(http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/DTDs/HDF5-File.dtd).

The h5gen tool uses the Xerces XML parser developed by the Apache
Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org/).

Java HDF5 Interface (JHI5) now uses HDF5-1.2.2
----------------------------------------------

The Java HDF5 Interface (JHI5) has been updated to HDF5-1.2.2.  Due
to minor changes in the HDF5 API, the JHI5 is not compatible with
earlier releases of HDF5-1.2.

Note that linking the new JHI5 with an older revision of HDF5
may result in loading errors on some platforms that indicate the
library cannot be found.  This can be caused by mismatches between
the C function names in Java and the function names in the
library.


Revisions to the HDF5 XML Document Type Definition (DTD)
========================================================

Development of the h5gen tool uncovered several 'bugs' in the HDF5 DTD,
which have been changed.  For information about the changes, see:

  http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/XML/Release2/index.html


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

   hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu