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                            Newsletter #80
                           November 18, 2004

CONTENTS
                                            *******************************
. Release of HDF Java Products Version 2.1  *                             *
                                            * Visit the HDF home page     *
. h5diff Improvements                       * for up-to-date information  *
                                            *                             *
                                            *  http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/  *
                                            *                             *
                                            *******************************

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

Release of HDF Java Products Version 2.1
========================================

A new version of the HDF Java Products, version 2.1, was 
recently released. This version was tested with HDF5-1.6.3.
The HDF Java Products can be downloaded from the following
page:

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

Version 2.1 includes bug fixes and a few new features.  
Following is a list of the major changes in this release:

  - A seamless plugin for user modules has been added. HDFView 
    will automatically detect and load a user's GUI and I/O 
    modules. There is no need to register new modules. 
 
  - HDFView can now open remote files with a URL.  For example,  
    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/hdf-java-html/hdf5_test.h5 or
    ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/files/hdf5/hdf-java/hdf5_test.h5 

  - A "HelpView" interface has been added to HDFView. Users can 
    implement their own help view. 

  - Metadata in a dataset can be easily viewed from the status bar, 
    by clicking on "Metadata" at the bottom of the HDFView window. 

  - An empty HDF5 compound dataset can be created with HDFView. 

  - User blocks can be added or modified in HDFView.

  - A static function was added to the FileFormat class to request 
    an individual object without loading the entire structure of the 
    file. 


h5diff Improvements
===================

The h5diff utility in HDF5-1.6.3 has many new options and features.
Please consult the h5diff documentation for complete details:
 
   http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc/Tools.html#Tools-Diff

In addition, performance improvements have been made to h5diff since 
HDF5-1.6.3 came out.  To obtain a version of h5diff with these changes, 
download the modified files, insert them into the location specified
below in the HDF5 source code, and then build HDF5.

The files that changed can be obtained from:

  ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF5/current/src/patches/h5diff/

The file names are:   h5diff.h, h5diff_array.c 

These files replace the files with the same names in the following 
location of the HDF5 source code:
  
   ./hdf5-1.6.3/tools/lib/ 


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

   hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu