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                            Newsletter #74
                           October 24, 2003

CONTENTS
                                            *******************************
. Release of HDF5-1.6.1                     *                             *
  - New Features and Changes                * Visit the HDF home page     *
  - Platforms Tested                        * for up-to-date information  *
  - Known Problems                          *                             *
                                            *  http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/  *
                                            *                             *
                                            *******************************

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Release of HDF5-1.6.1
=====================

HDF5-1.6.1 is now available for download from the NCSA HDF5 home 
page at:

    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/

The HDF5 documentation is included in the source code and can also
be accessed from:

    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc/

This is a fully tested release.  The configuration features supported
in this release can be viewed at:

    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/release/SuppConfigFeats.html

The RELEASE.txt file in the source code contains detailed information
about this release:
  
 ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF5/current/src/unpacked/release_docs/RELEASE.txt

For information on functions that have changed in HDF5-1.6.1, see:

    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc/ADGuide/Changes.html


New Features and Changes
------------------------

The major new features and changes in HDF5-1.6.1 are:

  o Added new H5Fget_freespace() routine to query the free space in a file.

  o Added a few new C++ functions.
 
  o Added support for gcc 3.3.1.

  o Fortran90 APIs are being integrated into the main body of the HDF5 
    Reference Manual (RM).  This process is complete in all RM sections
    except H5P.

  o Many bugs were fixed in this release, including the following: 

     - Fixed potential file corruption bug when too many object header
       messages (probably attributes, from a user perspective) were
       inserted into an object header and certain other conditions were
       met.  

     - Corrected some problems with variable-length datatypes.

     - Corrected some problems with the H5Tget_native_type function.
 
     - Corrected bug where H5Gunlink caused file corruption.

     - Corrected errors with using point selections to access data in
       chunked datasets.  

     - Modified library and file format to support storing indexed storage
       (chunked dataset) B-tree's with non-default internal 'K' values.

     - Fixed the error that caused "make install" to fail because of the
       macro definition syntax of "prefix?=..."  


Many other changes are also included in this release.  Please refer to the 
RELEASE.txt file in the source code for a comprehensive list of changes.


Platforms Tested
----------------

  AIX 
  Cray T3E, SV1, T90IEEE
  FreeBSD 
  HP-UX 
  IRIX 
  IRIX64 (32 and 64 bit)
  Linux 
  OSF1 
  Solaris (32 and 64 bit)
  TFLOPS
  IA-32 
  IA-64
  Windows 
  Mac OS X
  
For further information please refer to the following page (or the 
RELEASE.txt file):

    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/release/platforms5.html
                                  

Known Problems
--------------

Known problems at release time are listed in the RELEASE.txt file that 
comes with the source code.

Further information on known problems can be found on the following page:

  http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/release/known_problems5.html


-------------------------------------------------------------

For questions regarding these or other HDF issues, contact:

   hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu