path: root/release_docs/HISTORY.txt

HDF5 HISTORY
============
This file contains history of the HDF5 libraries releases

CONTENTS

13.     Release Information for hdf5-1.4.5
12.     Release Information for hdf5-1.4.4
11.     Release Information for hdf5-1.4.3
10.     Release Information for hdf5-1.4.2
9.      Release Information for hdf5-1.4.1
8.      Release Information for hdf5-1.4.0
7.      Release Information for hdf5-1.2.2
6.      Release Information for hdf5-1.2.1
5.      Release Information for hdf5-1.2.0
4.      Changes from Release 1.0.0 to Release 1.0.1
3.      Changes from the Beta 1.0.0 Release to Release 1.0.0
2.      Changes from the Second Alpha 1.0.0 Release to the Beta 1.0.0 Release
1.      Changes from the First Alpha 1.0.0 Release to the 
                Second Alpha 1.0.0 Release

[Search on the string '%%%%' for per-release section breaks.]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
%%%%1.4.5%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.4.5 (02/February/03)


13.   Release information for HDF5 version 1.4.5
==============================================================================


INTRODUCTION

This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.4.4 and
HDF5-1.4.5, and contains information on the platforms tested and
known problems in HDF5-1.4.5. For additional information check the 
HISTORY.txt file in the HDF5 source.

The HDF5 documentation can be found on the NCSA ftp server
(ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory:

    /HDF/HDF5/docs/

For more information, see the HDF5 home page at:
   
    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to:

    hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu


CONTENTS

- New Features
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.4
- Performance Improvements
- Documentation
- Platforms Tested
- Supported Configuration Features
- Known Problems


New Features
============
  o Configuration
  ================
    * Added "unofficial support" for building with a C++ compiler (or at least
      not failing badly when building with a C++ compiler).  QAK - 2003/01/09
    * Added "unofficial support" for AIX 64bits.  See INSTALL for configure
      details. AKC - 2002/08/29
    * Added "--with-dmalloc" flag, to easily enable support for the 'dmalloc'
      debugging malloc implementation. QAK - 2002/07/15

  o Library
  =========
    o General
    --------- 
      * Allow scalar dataspaces to be used for parallel I/O.  QAK - 2002/11/05
      * Added environment variable "HDF5_DISABLE_VERSION_CHECK", which disables
        the version checking between the header files and the library linked
        into an application if set to '1'.  This should be used with caution,
        mis-matched headers and library binaries can cause _serious_ problems.
        QAK - 2002/10/15
      * Partially fixed space allocation inefficiencies in the file by
        improving our algorithms for re-using freed space.  QAK - 2002/08/27
      * API tracing has been improved. Nested API calls don't screw up the
        output format; function call and return event times can be logged;
        total time spent in each function can be logged.  The following
        HDF5_DEBUG environment variable words affect tracing:
	    trace   -- turn on/off basic tracing
	    ttimes  -- turn on tracing and report event times and
                       time spent in each API function.
        ttop    -- turn on tracing but display only top-level
                       API calls.

    o APIs
    ------
      * Several missing fortran APIs have been added to the library:

        h5get_libversion_f        h5tget_member_index_f  h5dget_storage_size_f 
        h5check_version_f         h5tvlen_create_f       h5dvlen_get_max_len_f
        h5garbage_collect_f                              h5dwrite_vl_f
        h5dont_atexit_f                                  h5dread_vl_f

      Functions h5dvlen_get_max_len_f, h5dwrite_vl_f, and h5dread_vl_f support
      VL Length C APIs functionality for integer, real and string datatypes.
      See HDF5 Reference Manual and HDF5 FORTRAN90 User's Notes for more
      information and for the functions description.

  o Parallel library
  ==================
    * The MPI-posix virtual file driver makes gpfs_fcntl() hints to tell
        the underlying GPFS file system to avoid prefetching byte range
        tokens if USE_GPFS_HINTS is defined when this file is compiled.
        This temporary solution is intended to be removed once the HDF5
        API supports the necessary functionality that makes it possible
        for this sort of thing do be done at a higher software layer.
        RPM - 2002/12/03
    * Added MPI-posix VFL driver.  This VFL driver uses MPI functions to
        coordinate actions, but performs I/O directly with POSIX sec(2)
        (i.e. open/close/read/write/etc.) calls.  This driver should _NOT_
        be used to access files that are not on a parallel filesystem.
        The following API functions were added:
            herr_t H5Pset_fapl_mpiposix(hid_t fapl_id, MPI_Comm comm);
            herr_t H5Pget_fapl_mpiposix(hid_t fapl_id, MPI_Comm *comm/*out*/);
        QAK - 2002/07/15



  o Support for new platforms and languages
  =========================================
    * C++ API now works on the Origin2000 (IRIX6.5.14.)  BMR - 2002/11/14

  
  o Misc.
  =========================================
    HDF5 1.4.5 works with Portland Group Compilers (pgcc, pgf90 and pgCC 
    version 4.0-2) on Linux 2.4 


Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.4 Release
==================================
    * H5Fopen without the H5F_ACC_CREAT flag should not succeed in creating
        a new file with the 'core' VFL driver.  QAK - 2003/01/24
    * Corrected metadata caching bug in parallel I/O which could cause hangs
        when chunked datasets were accessed with independent transfer mode.
        QAK - 2003/01/23
    * Allow opening objects with unknown object header messages.
        QAK - 2003/01/21
    * Added improved error assertion for nil VL strings.  It return error
        stack instead of a simple assertion.  SLU - 2002/12/16
    * Fixed h5dump bug(cannot dump data and datatype) for VL string. 
        SLU - 2002/11/18 
    * Fixed error condition where "none" selections were not being handled
        correctly in serial & parallel.  QAK - 2002/10/29
    * Fixed problem where optimized hyperslab routines were incorrectly
        invoked for parallel I/O operations in collective mode.  QAK - 2002/07/22
    * Fixed metadata corruption problem which could occur when many objects
        are created in a file during parallel I/O.  QAK - 2002/07/19
    * Fixed minor problem with configuration when users specified /usr/include
        and /usr/lib for the --with-* options that some compilers can't
        handle. BW - 2003/01/23



Documentation
=============
    New PDF files are not available for this release.


Platforms Tested
================

    AIX 5.1  (32 and 64-bit)      C for AIX Compiler, Version 6
                                  xlf 8.1.0.2
                                  poe 3.2.0.11
    Cray T3E sn6606 2.0.6.08      Cray Standard C Version 6.6.0.1.3 
                                  Cray Fortran Version 3.6.0.0.12 
    Cray SV1 10.0.1. 0            Cray Standard C Version 6.6.0.1.3
                                  Cray Fortran Version 3.6.0.0.12
    Cray T90IEEE 10.0.1.01u       Cray Standard C Version 6.4.0.2.3
                                  Cray Fortran Version 3.4.0.3
    FreeBSD 4.7                   gcc 2.95.4
                                  g++ 2.95.5
    HP-UX B.11.00                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.11.01.20 
                                  HP F90 v2.4
    IRIX 6.5                      MIPSpro cc 7.30
    IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.3.1.3m
                                  F90 MIPSpro 7.3.1.3m (64 only)
    Linux 2.4.18                  gcc 3.2.1
                                  g++ 3.2.1
                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 6.0
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 6.0
                                  PGI compilers (pgcc, pgf90, pgCC) version 4.0-2
                                  pgf90  3.2-4
    OSF1 V5.1                     Compaq C V6.4-014
                                  Compaq Fortran X5.4A-1684
                                  gcc version 3.0 for C++
    SunOS 5.7                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0
     (Solaris 2.7)                WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C++ 5.0 
                                  WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/10/25 
                                  FORTRAN 90 2.0 Patch 107356-04 
    SunOS 5.8/32                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C 5.2 2000/09/11
     (Solaris 2.8)                Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 Fortran 95 6.1 
                                          Patch 109503-07 2001/08/11
                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C++ 5.2 Patch
                                        109508-04 2001/07/11
    SunOS 5.8/64                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C 5.2 2000/09/11
     (Solaris 2.8)                Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 Fortran 95 6.1 
                                          Patch 109503-07 2001/08/11
                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C++ 5.2 Patch
                                        109508-04 2001/07/11
    TFLOPS r1.0.4 v4.3.3 i386     pgcc Rel 3.1-4i with mpich-1.2.4 with
                                          local modifications
    IA-32 Linux 2.4.9             gcc 2.96
                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 7.0
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 7.0
                                  
    IA-64 Linux 2.4.16 ia64       gcc version 2.96 20000731
                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 7.0
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 7.0
    Windows 2000 (NT5.0)          MSVC++ 6.0
                                  DEC Visual Fortran 6.0
    Windows XP                    .NET
    Windows NT4.0                 Code Warrior 6.0
    MAC OS X                      Darwin 6.2
                                  gcc and g++ Apple Computer, Inc. GCC 
                                  version 1161, based on gcc version 3.1
                                  


Supported Configuration Features Summary
========================================

    In the tables below
          y   = tested and supported
          n   = not supported or not tested in this release
          x   = not working in this release
          dna = does not apply
          ( ) = footnote appears below second table


    Platform             C   C         F90  F90       C++  Shared         zlib
                             parallel       parallel       libraries (5)
    Solaris2.6           y   n         y    n         y    y              y
    Solaris2.7 64-bit    y   y (1)     y    y (1)     y    y              y
    Solaris2.7 32-bit    y   y (1)     y    y (1)     y    y              y
    Solaris2.8 64-bit    y   n         y    y (1)     y    y              y
    Solaris2.8 32-bit    y   n         y    y (1)     y    y              y
    IRIX6.5              y   y (1)     n    n         n    y              y 
    IRIX64_6.5 64-bit    y   y (2)     y    y         y    y              y
    IRIX64_6.5 32-bit    y   y (2)     n    n         n    y              y
    HPUX11.00            y   y (1)     y    n         n    y              y
    OSF1 v5.1            y   n         y    n         y    y              y
    T3E             (6)  y   n         y    n         n    n              y
    SV1                  y   n         y    n         n    n              y
    T90 IEEE             y   n         y    n         n    n              y
    TFLOPS               n   y (1)     n    n         n    n              y
    AIX-5.1 32-bit       y   y         y    y         y    n              y
    AIX-5.1 64-bit       y   y         y    y         y    n              y
    WinXP           (7)  y   n         n    n         y    y              y
    WinNT/2000           y   n         y    n         y    y              y
    WinNT CW             y   n         n    n         n    n              y
    Mac OS X 10.2        y   n         n    n         y    y              y
    FreeBSD              y   y (1)     n    n         y    y              y
    Linux 2.2            y   y (1)     y    y (1)     y    y              y
    Linux 2.4 gcc   (3)  y   y (1)     y    n         y    y              y
    Linux 2.4 Intel (3)  y   n         y    n         n    n              y
    Linux 2.4 PGI   (3)  y   n         y    n         y    n              y
    Linux 2.4 IA32       y   n         y    n         n    n              y
    Linux 2.4 IA64       y   n         y    n         n    n              y
    

    Platform             static-  Thread-  SRB  GASS  STREAM-
                         exec     safe                VFD
    Solaris2.6           x        y        n    n     y
    Solaris2.7 64-bit    x        y        n    n     y
    Solaris2.7 32-bit    x        y        n    n     y
    Solaris2.8 64-bit    x        n        n    n     y
    Solaris2.8 32-bit    x        y        n    n     y
    IRIX6.5              x        n        n    n     y
    IRIX64_6.5 64-bit    x        y        n    y     y
    IRIX64_6.5 32-bit    x        y        n    y     y
    HPUX11.00            x        n        n    n     y
    OSF1 v5.1            y        n        n    n     y
    T3E             (6)  y        n        n    n     y
    SV1                  y        n        n    n     y
    T90 IEEE             y        n        n    n     y
    TFLOPS               y        n        n    n     n
    AIX-5.1 32-bit       y        n        n    n     y
    AIX-5.1 64-bit       y        n        n    n     y
    WinXP           (7)  dna      n        n    n     n
    WinNT/2000           dna      n        n    n     n
    WinNT CW             dna      n        n    n     n
    Mac OS X 10.2        y        n        n    n     y
    FreeBSD              y        y        n    n     y
    Linux 2.2            y        y        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4 gcc   (3)  y        y        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4 Intel (3)  y        n        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4 PGI   (3)  y        n        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4 IA32       y        n        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4 IA64       y        n        n    n     y

    Notes: (1) Using mpich 1.2.4.
           (2) Using mpt and mpich 1.2.4.
           (3) Linux 2.4 with GNU, Intel, and PGI compilers.
           (4) No HDF4-related tools.
           (5) Shared libraries are provided only for the C library, 
               except on Windows where they are provided for all languages.
           (6) Debug mode only.
           (7) Binaries only; source code for this platform is not being 
               released at this time.


Known Problems
==============

    * On Linux 2.4 IA64, Fortran test fails for h5dwrite_vl_f 
      for integer and real base datatypes.

    * When fortran library is built with Intel compilers, compilation
      for fflush1.f90, fflush2.f90 and fortanlib_test.f90 will fail 
      complaining about EXEC function. Comment the call to EXEC subroutine
      in each program, or get a patch for the HDF5 Fortran source code. 

    * Fortran external dataset test fails on Linux 2.4 with pgf90 compiler.

    * On Windows, h5dump may abort printing if a VL string is longer than 4096
      bytes due to a compiler problem.  It'll be fixed in v1.6 release.

    * Datasets or attributes which have a variable-length string datatype are
      not printing correctly with h5dump and h5ls.

    * When a dataset with the variable-length datatype is overwritten, 
      the library can develop memory leaks that cause the file to become 
      unnecessarily large.  This is planned to be fixed in the next release.

    * On the SV1, the h5ls test fails due to a difference between the 
      SV1 printf precision and the printf precision on other platforms.

    * The h5dump tests may fail to match the expected output on some
      platforms (e.g. SP2 parallel, Windows) where the error messages
      directed to "stderr" do not appear in the "right order" with output
      from stdout.  This is not an error.

    * The --enable-static-exec configure flag fails to compile for HP-UX
      11.00 platforms.

    * The executables are always dynamic on IRIX64 6.5(64 and n32) and 
      IRIX 6.5 even if they are configured with --enable-static-exec.

    * IRIX 6.5 fails to compile if configured with --enable-static-exec.

    * The executables are always dynamic on Solaris 2.7 ans 2.8(64 and n32)
      even if they are configured with --enable-static-exec.
    
    * The HDF5_MPI_OPT_TYPES optimization code in the parallel HDF5 will cause
      a hang in some cases when chunked storage is used.  This is now set to
      be off by default.  One may turn it on by setting the environment 
      variable HDF5_MPI_OPT_TYPES to a non-zero value such as 1.

    * On OSF1 v5.1 and IA32 h5dumpgentst program that generates test files
      for h5dump, gives segmentation fault.

    * On Windows platforms, C and Fortran tests fail with the debug DLL version
      of the Library if built from all_withf90.zip file.

    * On Cray T3E (sn6606 2.0.6.08 unicosmk CRAY T3E) with Cray Standard C Version 6.6.0.1.3
      compiler optimization causes errors in many HDF5 Library tests. Use -g -h zero flags
      to build HDF5 Library. 

    * On Cray SV1 10.0.1. 0 datatype convertion test fails. Please check HDF FTP site
      if patch is available. We will try to provide one in the nearest future. 

    * For configuration, building and testing with Intel and PGI compilers see
      corresponding section in INSTALL file.


%%%%1.4.4%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.4.4 (02/July/02)

12.   Release information for HDF5 version 1.4.4
==============================================================================

INTRODUCTION

This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.4.3 and
HDF5-1.4.4, and contains information on the platforms tested and
known problems in HDF5-1.4.4. For more details check the HISTORY.txt
file in the HDF5 source.

The HDF5 documentation can be found on the NCSA ftp server
(ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory:

    /HDF/HDF5/docs/

For more information, see the HDF5 home page at:
   
    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to:

    hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu


CONTENTS

- New Features
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.3
- Performance Improvements
- Documentation
- Platforms Tested
- Supported Configuration Features
- Known Problems


New Features
============
  o Configuration
  ================
    * The H4 to H5 tools have been removed from the main source and placed 
      in a separate package. You can get these tools from the HDF ftp site
      (ftp://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/). The "--with-hdf4" command-line option 
      during configure is no longer valid.  BW - 2002/06/25

  o Library
  =========
    o General
    --------- 
      * Fill-value forward-compatibility with release 1.5 was added.  SLU -
        2002/04/11
      * A new query function H5Tget_member_index has been added for compound
        and enumeration data types.  This function retrieves a member's index 
        by name.  SLU - 2002/04/05
      * Added serial multi-gigabyte file size test.  "test/big -h" shows
        the help page.  AKC - 2002/03/29
 
    o APIs
    ------
      * The F90 subroutines h5dwrite_f, h5dread_f, h5awrite_f, and h5aread_f 
        were overloaded with a "dims" argument of type INTEGER(HSIZE_T) to 
        specify the size of the array.  We recommend using these subroutines 
        with the new type; module subroutines that accept "dims" as an i
        INTEGER array of size 7 will be deprecated in release 1.6.  
        EIP - 2002/05/06
 
    o Performance
    -------------
      * Added internal "small data" aggregation, which can reduce the number of
        actual I/O calls made, improving performance.  QAK - 2002/06/05
      * Improved internal metadata aggregation, which can reduce the number of
        actual I/O calls made, improving performance.  Additionally, this can
        reduce the size of files produced.  QAK - 2002/06/04
      * Improved internal metadata caching, which can reduce the number of
        actual I/O calls made by a substantial amount, improving
        performance.  QAK - 2002/06/03


  o Parallel library
  ==================
    * Fixed bug in parallel I/O routines where a collective I/O which used
      MPI derived types, followed by an independent I/O would cause the library
      to hang.  QAK 2002/06/24
    * Added environment variable flag to control whether creating MPI derived
      types is preferred or not.  This can affect performance, depending on
      which way the MPI-I/O library is optimized.  The default is set to
      prefer MPI derived types for collective raw data transfers; setting the
      HDF5_MPI_PREFER_DERIVED_TYPES environment variable to "0" (i.e.:
      "setenv HDF5_MPI_PREFER_DERIVED_TYPES 0") changes the preference to avoid
      using them whenever possible.  QAK - 2002/06/19
    * Changed MPI I/O routines to avoid creating MPI derived types (and thus
      needing to set the file view) for contiguous selections within datasets.
      This should result in some performance improvement for those types of
      selections.  QAK - 2002/06/18
    * Changed MPI type support for collective I/O to be enabled by default.
      This can be disabled by setting the HDF5_MPI_OPT_TYPES environment
      variable to the value "0".  QAK - 2002/06/14
    * Allowed chunks in chunked datasets to be cached when parallel file is
      opened for read-only access (bug #709).  QAK - 2002/06/10
    * Changed method for allocating chunked dataset blocks to only allocate
      blocks that don't already exist, instead of attempting to create all the
      blocks all the time.  This improves performance for chunked
      datasets.  QAK - 2002/05/17
    * Allowed the call to MPI_File_sync to be avoided when the file is going to
      immediately be closed, improving performance.  QAK - 2002/05/13
    * Allowed the metadata writes to be shared among all processes, easing the
      burden on process 0.  QAK - 2002/05/10


  o Tools
  =======
    * h5redeploy utility was added. It updates HDF5 compiler tools
      after the HDF5 software has been installed in a new location.


  o Support for new platforms and languages
  =========================================
    * Parallel Fortran Library works now on HP-UX B.11.00 Sys V.
      EIP - 2002/05/06
    * Intel C++ and F90 compilers Version 6.0 are supported on Linux 2.4.
    * Intel C++ compilers Version 6.0 are supported on Windows 2000.

  
  o Misc.
  =========================================
   * zlib has been moved out of the Windows source release. Users should go to
     the ZLIB homepage(http://www.zlib.org) to download the corresponding 
     zlib library.
   * The Windows binary release is built with the old version of the zlib 
     library.  We expect users to use zlib 1.1.4 to build with the source 
     release.  
   * In the Windows-specific install document, we specify how to test backward
     compatibility. However, in this release, we are not testing the backward
     compatibility of HDF5.


Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.3 Release
==================================
    * Fixed bug in chunking routines where they were using internal allocation
        free routines, instead of malloc/free, preventing user filters from
        working correctly.  Chunks are now allocated/freed with malloc/free and
        so should the chunks in user filters.  QAK 2002/06/18
    * Fixed bug where regular hyperslab selection could get incorrectly
        transferred when the number of elements in a row did not fit evenly
        into the buffer provided.  QAK 2002/06/12
    * Fixed bug (#499) which allowed an "empty" compound or enumerated datatype
        (one with no members) to be used to create a dataset or to be committed
        to a file.  QAK - 2002/06/11
    * Fixed bug (#777) which allowed a compound datatype to be inserted into
        itself.  QAK - 2002/06/10
    * Fixed bug (#789) where creating 1-D dataset region reference caused the
        library to go into infinite loop.  QAK - 2002/06/10
    * Fixed bug (#699, fix provided by a user) where a scalar dataspace was
        written to the file and then subsequently queried with the
        H5Sget_simple_extent_type function; type was reported as H5S_SIMPLE 
        instead of H5S_SCALAR. EIP - 2002/06/04
    * Clear symbol table node "dirty" flag when flushing symbol tables to
        disk, to reduce I/O calls made & improve performance.  QAK - 2002/06/03
    * Fixed bug where an object's header could get corrupted in certain
        obscure situations when many objects were created in the
        file.  QAK - 2002/05/31
    * Fixed bug where read/write intent in file IDs created with H5Freopen
        was not being kept the same as the original file.  QAK - 2002/05/14
    * Fixed bug where selection offsets were not being used when iterating
        through point and hyperslab selections with
        H5Diterate().  QAK - 2002/04/29
    * Fixed bug where the data for several level deep nested compound &
        variable-length datatypes used for datasets were getting corrupted when
        written to the file.  QAK - 2002/04/17
    * Fixed bug where selection offset was being ignored for certain hyperslab
        selections when optimized I/O was being performed.  QAK - 2002/04/02
    * Fixed limitation in h5dumper with object names which reached over 1024
        characters in length. We can now handle arbitrarily larger sizes for
        object names. BW - 2002/03/29
    * Fixed bug where variable-length string type did not behave as a
        string.  SLU - 2002/03/28
    * Fixed bug in H5Gget_objinfo() which was not setting the 'fileno'
        of the H5G_stat_t struct.  QAK - 2002/03/27
    * Fixed data corruption bug in hyperslab routines when contiguous
        hyperslab that spans entire dimension and is larger than type
        conversion buffer is attempted to be read.  QAK - 2002/03/26


Performance Improvements
========================
    This release of the HDF5 library has been extensively tuned to improve
performance, especially to improve parallel I/O performance.
    Most of the specific information for particular performance improvements
is mentioned in the "New Features" and "Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.3" sections
of this document, but in general, the library should make fewer and larger
I/O requests when accessing a file.  Additionally, improvements to the parallel
I/O portions of the library should have reduced the communications and barriers
used in various internal algorithms, improving the performance of the library.
    However, with the extensive changes to some portions of the library that
were required for these improvements, some errors or unanticipated results may
have been introduced also.  Please report any problems encountered to our
support team at hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu.
    Hopefully these improvements will benefit all HDF5 applications, but if
there are particular I/O patterns that appear to be slower than necessary,
please send e-mail to hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu with a sample program showing the
problem behavior; we will look into the issue to see if it is possible to
address it.


Documentation
=============
    * Documentation was updated for the hdf5-1.4.4 release.
    * A new "HDF5 User's Guide" is under development.  See 
      http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_dev_snapshot/H5_NewUG/current/.
    * A "Parallel HDF5 Tutorial" is available at 
      http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc/Tutor/.
    * The "HDF5 Tutorial" is not distributed with this release.  It is 
      available at http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc/Tutor/.


Platforms Tested
================

    AIX 4.3.3.0 (IBM SP powerpc)  xlc 5.0.2.0
                                  mpcc_r 5.0.2.0
                                  xlf 07.01.0000.0002
                                  mpxlf 07.01.0000.0002
    AIX 4.3 (IBM SP RS6000)       C for AIX Compiler, Version 5.0.2.0
                                  xlf 7.1.0.2
                                  poe 3.1.0.12 (includes mpi)
    AIX 5.1                       xlc 5.0.2.0 
                                  xlf 07.01.0000.0002
                                  mpcc_r 5.0.2.0; mpxlf_r 07.01.0000.0002
    Cray T3E sn6711 2.0.5.57      Cray Standard C Version 6.5.0.3
                                  Cray Fortran Version 3.5.0.4
    Cray SV1 10.0.1.1             Cray Standard C Version 6.5.0.3 
                                  Cray Fortran Version 3.5.0.4
    FreeBSD 4.6                   gcc 2.95.4
                                  g++ 2.95.4
    HP-UX B.10.20                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.10.32.30
                                  HP F90 v2.3
    HP-UX B.11.00                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.11.01.20 
                                  HP F90 v2.4
    HP-UX B.11.00 SysV            HP C  HP92453-01 A.11.01.20 
                                  HP F90 v2.4
                                  HP MPI [not a product] (03/24/2000) B6060BA
    IRIX 6.5                      MIPSpro cc 7.30
    IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.3.1.3m
                                  F90 MIPSpro 7.3.1.3m (64 only)
    Linux 2.4.9-31smp             gcc 2.95.3
                                  g++ 2.95.3
                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 6.0
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 6.0
                                  MPICH 1.2.2
    Linux 2.2.18smp               gcc 2.95.2
                                  gcc 2.95.2 with mpich 1.2.1
                                  g++ 2.95.2
                                  pgf90 3.2-4
    OSF1 V5.1                     Compaq C V6.4-014
                                  Compaq Fortran V5.5-1877-48BBF
                                  gcc version 3.0 for C++
    SunOS 5.7                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0
     (Solaris 2.7)                WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C++ 5.0 
                                  WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/10/25 
                                  FORTRAN 90 2.0 Patch 107356-04 
    SunOS 5.8/32                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C 5.2 2000/09/11
     (Solaris 2.8)                Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 Fortran 95 6.1 
                                          Patch 109503-07 2001/08/11
                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C++ 5.2 Patch
                                        109508-04 2001/07/11
    SunOS 5.8/64                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C 5.2 2000/09/11
     (Solaris 2.8)                Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 Fortran 95 6.1 
                                          Patch 109503-07 2001/08/11
                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C++ 5.2 Patch
                                        109508-04 2001/07/11
    TFLOPS r1.0.4 v4.2.2 i386     pgcc Rel 3.1-4i with mpich-1.2.3 with
                                          local modifications
    IA-32 Linux 2.4.9             cc Intel 5.0.1
                                  gcc 2.96
                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 6.0
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 6.0
                                  
    IA-64 Linux 2.4.16 ia64       gcc version 2.96 20000731
                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 6.0
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 6.0
    Windows 2000 (NT5.0)          MSVC++ 6.0
                                  DEC Visual Fortran 6.0
    Windows NT4.0                 MSVC++ 6.0
                                  DEC Visual Fortran 6.0
    Windows NT4.0                 Code Warrior 6.0


Supported Configuration Features Summary
========================================

    In the tables below
          y  = tested and supported
          n  = not supported or not tested in this release
          x  = not working in this release
         ( ) = footnote appears below second table


    Platform           C  C         F90  F90      C++  Shared       zlib  Tools
                          parallel       parallel      libraries(5)
    Solaris2.6         y  n         y    n        y    y            y     y
    Solaris2.7 64      y  y (1)     y    n        y    y            y     y
    Solaris2.7 32      y  y (1)     y    n        y    y            y     y
    Solaris2.8 64      y  n         y    n        y    y            y     y
    Solaris2.8 32      y  n         y    n        y    y            y     y
    IRIX6.5            y  y (1)     n    n        n    y            y     y
    IRIX64_6.5 64      y  y (2)     y    y        n    y            y     y
    IRIX64_6.5 n32     y  y (2)     n    n        n    y            y     y
    HPUX10.20          y  n         y    n        n    y            y     y
    HPUX11.00          y  n         y    n        n    y            y     y
    HPUX11 SysV        y  y         y    y        n    y            y     y
    OSF1 v5.1          y  n         y    n        y    y            y     y
    T3E                y  y         y    y        n    n            y     y
    SV1                y  n         y    n        n    n            y     y
    TFLOPS             n  y (1)     n    n        n    n            y     y (4)
    AIX-4.3            y  y         y    y        y    n            y     y
    AIX-5.1            y  y         y    y        n    n            y     y
    WinNT/2000         y  n         y    n        y    y            y     y
    WinNT CW           y  n         n    n        n    n            y     y
    FreeBSD            y  n         n    n        y    y            y     y
    Linux 2.2          y  y (1)     y    n        y    y            y     y
    Linux 2.4          y  y (1)     n    n        y    y            y     y
    Linux 2.4 Intel(6) y  n         y    n        y    n            y     y
    Linux 2.4 IA32     y  n         y    n        n    n            y     y
    Linux 2.4 IA64     y  n         y    n        n    n            y     y


    Platform           1.2            static-  Thread-  SRB  GASS  STREAM-
                       compatibility  exec     safe                VFD
    Solaris2.6         y              x        y        n    n     y
    Solaris2.7 64      y              x        y        n    n     y
    Solaris2.7 32      y              x        y        n    n     y
    Solaris2.8 64      y              y        n        n    n     y
    Solaris2.8 32      y              x        y        n    n     y
    IRIX6.5            y              x        n        n    n     y
    IRIX64_6.5 64      y              x        y        n    y     y
    IRIX64_6.5 n32     y              x        y        n    y     y
    HPUX10.20          y              y        n        n    n     y
    HPUX11.00          y              x        n        n    n     y
    HPUX11 SysV        y              x        n        n    n     y
    OSF1 v5.1          y              y        n        n    n     y
    T3E                y              y        n        n    n     y
    SV1                y              y        n        n    n     y
    TFLOPS             y              y        n        n    n     n
    AIX-4.3            y              y (3)    n        n    n     y
    AIX-5.1            y              y        n        n    n     y
    WinNT/2000         y              y        n        n    n     n
    WinNT CW           n              n        n        n    n     n
    FreeBSD            y              y        y        n    n     y
    Linux 2.2          y              y        y        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4          y              y        y        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4 Intel(6) y              y        n        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4 IA32     y              y        n        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4 IA64     y              y        n        n    n     y


    Footnotes: (1) Using mpich.
               (2) Using mpt and mpich.
               (3) When configured with static-exec enabled, tests fail in 
                   serial mode.
               (4) No HDF4-related tools.
               (5) Shared libraries are provided only for the C library, 
                   except on Windows where they are provided for all languages.
               (6) Linux 2.4 with Intel compilers.


Known Problems
==============

    * Datasets or attributes which have a variable-length string datatype are
      not printing correctly with h5dump and h5ls.

    * When a dataset with the variable-length datatype is overwritten, 
      the library can develop memory leaks that cause the file to become 
      unnecessarily large.  This is planned to be fixed in the next release.

    * On the SV1, the h5ls test fails due to a difference between the 
      SV1 printf precision and the printf precision on other platforms.

    * The h5dump tests may fail to match the expected output on some
      platforms (e.g. SP2 parallel, Windows) where the error messages
      directed to "stderr" do not appear in the "right order" with output
      from stdout.  This is not an error.

    * The --enable-static-exec configure flag fails to compile for HP-UX
      11.00 platforms.

    * The executables are always dynamic on IRIX64 6.5(64 and n32) and 
      IRIX 6.5 even if they are configured with --enable-static-exec.

    * IRIX 6.5 fails to compile if configured with --enable-static-exec.
    
    * The HDF5_MPI_OPT_TYPES optimization code in the parallel HDF5 will cause
      a hang in some cases when chunked storage is used.  This is now set to
      be off by default.  One may turn it on by setting the environment 
      variable HDF5_MPI_OPT_TYPES to a non-zero value such as 1.

    * On IA32 and IA64 systems, if you use a compiler other than GCC (such as
      Intel's ecc or icc compilers), you will need to modify the generated
      "libtool" program after configuration is finished. On or around line 104
      of the libtool file, there are lines which look like:

          # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
          wl=""

      Change these lines to this:

          # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
          wl="-Wl,"

    * To build the Fortran library using Intel compilers, one has to 
          x modify the source code in the fortran/src directory to remove the
            !DEC and !MS compiler directives.
          x The build will fail in the fortran/test directory and then in the
            fortran/examples directory; to proceed, edit the work.pcl files in
            those directories to contain two lines

                    work.pc
                    ../src/work.pc 

    * To build the Fortran library on IA64 use
                   setenv CC "ecc -DIA64"
                   setenv F9X "efc -cl,work.pcl"
            before running configure and see the steps described above.


%%%%1.4.3%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.4.3 (18/Februaru/02)

11.  Release information for HDF5 version 1.4.3
==============================================================================


INTRODUCTION

This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.4.2 and
HDF5-1.4.3, and contains information on the platforms tested and
known problems in HDF5-1.4.2. For more details check the HISTORY.txt
file in the HDF5 source.

The HDF5 documentation can be found on the NCSA ftp server
(ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory:

     /HDF/HDF5/docs/

For more information look at the HDF5 home page at:
   
    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to:

    hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu


CONTENTS

- New Features
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.2
- Documentation
- Platforms Tested
- Supported Configuration Features
- Known Problems


New Features
============
  o Configuration
  ================
    * Can use just enable-threadsafe if the C compiler has built-in pthreads
      support.

  o Library
  =========
   o General
   --------- 
    * Added a new test to verify the information provided by the configure
      command.
    * Changed internal error handling macros to reduce code size of library by
      about 10%.

   o APIs
   ------
    * Changed prototype for H5Awrite from:
        H5Awrite(hid_t attr_id, hid_t type_id, void *buf)
      to:
        H5Awrite(hid_t attr_id, hid_t type_id, const void *buf)
    * The H5Pset_fapl_split() accepts raw and meta file names similar to the
      syntax of H5Pset_fapl_multi() in addition to what it used to accept.

    C++ API:
    * Added operator= to class PredType
    * Add the overloaded member function Attribute::getName to return
      the attribute name's length as in C API.  Note that the current
      Attribute::getName, that returns "string", is still available.
    * Following the change in the C library, the corresponding C++ API
      is changed from:
        void Attribute::write( const DataType& mem_type, void *buf )
      to:
        void Attribute::write( const DataType& mem_type, const void *buf )

   o Performance
   -------------
    * Added perform programs to test the HDF5 library performance.  Programs
      are installed in directory perform/.
    * Improved performance of byte-swapping during data conversions.
    * Improved performance of single, contiguous hyperslabs when reading or
      writing.
    * Added support to read/write portions of chunks directly, if they are
      uncompressed and too large to cache.  This should speed up I/O on chunked
      datasets for a few more cases.  -QAK, 1/31/02

  o Parallel Library
  ==================
    * Parallel C HDF5 now works on HP-UX platforms, Compaq clusters,
      Linux clusters, Cplants (alpha-linux clusters).

  o Tools
  =======
    * A helper script called ``h5cc'', which helps compilation of HDF5
      programs, is now distributed with HDF5. See the reference manual
      for information on how to use this feature.
    * The H5Dumper can now dump comments associated with groups. -WCW 01-05-02

  o Support for new platforms and languages
  =========================================
    * HDF5 C++ Library is supported on Windows platforms (shared and static)
    * HDF5 F90 shared library is supported on Windows platforms.
    * HDF5 C Library is supported on IA32 and IA64 platforms.



Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.2 Release
==================================

    * Fixed a bug when reading chunked datasets where the edge of the dataset
      would be incorrectly detected and generate an assertion failure.
    * Fixed a bug where reading an entire dataset wasn't being handled
      optimally when the dataset had unlimited dimensions.  Dataset is read
      in a single low-level I/O now, instead of being broken into separate
      pieces internally.
    * Fixed a bug where reading or writing chunked data which needed datatype
      conversion could result in data values getting corrupted.
    * Fixed a bug where appending a point selection to the current selection
      would not actually append the point when there were no points defined
      currently.
    * Fixed a bug where 'or'ing a hyperslab with a 'none' selection would
      fail.  Now adds that hyperslab as the first hyperlab in the selection.
    * Fixed a bug in the 'big' test where quota limits weren't being detected
      properly if they caused close() to fail.
    * Fixed a bug in internal B-tree code where a B-tree was not being copied
      correctly.
    * Fixed an off-by-one error in H5Sselect_valid when hyperslab selections
      which would allow hyperslab selections which overlapped the edge of the
      selection by one element as valid.
    * Fixed the internal macros used to encode & decode file metadata, to avoid
      an unaligned access warning on IA64 machines.
    * Corrected behavior of H5Tinsert to not allow compound datatype fields to
      be inserted past the end of the datatype.
    * Retired the DPSS virtual file driver (--with-gridstorage configure
      option).
    * Fixed bug where variable-length datatypes for attributes was not working
      correctly.
    * Fixed bug where raw data re-allocated from the free-list would sometimes
      overlap with the metadata accumulator and get corrupted. QAK - 1/23/02
    * Fixed bug where a preempted chunk in the chunk data could still be
      used by an internal pointer and cause an assertion failure or core
      dump. QAK - 2/13/02
    * Fixed bug where non-zero fill-value was not being read correctly from
      certain chunked datasets when using an "all" or contiguous hyperslab
      selection.  QAK - 2/14/02


Documentation
=============
    * Documentation was updated for the hdf5-1.4.3 release.
    * A new "HDF5 User's Guide" is under development.  See 
      http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_dev_snapshot/H5_NewUG/current/.
    * Parallel Tutorial is available at http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc/Tutor/


Platforms Tested
================

    AIX 4.3.3.0 (IBM SP powerpc)  xlc 5.0.2.0
                                  mpcc_r 5.0.2.0
                                  xlf 07.01.0000.0002
                                  mpxlf 07.01.0000.0002
    AIX 4.3 (IBM SP RS6000)       C for AIX Compiler, Version 5.0.2.0
                                  xlf 7.1.0.2
                                  poe 3.1.0.12 (includes mpi)
    Cray T3E sn6711 2.0.5.57      Cray Standard C Version 6.5.0.3
                                  Cray Fortran Version 3.5.0.4
    Cray SV1 10.0.0.8             Cray Standard C Version 6.5.0.3 
                                  Cray Fortran Version 3.5.0.4
    FreeBSD 4.5                   gcc 2.95.3
                                  g++ 2.95.3
    HP-UX B.10.20                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.10.32.30
                                  HP F90 v2.3
    HP-UX B.11.00                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.11.01.20 
                                  HP F90 v2.4
    HP-UX B.11.00 SysV            HP C  HP92453-01 A.11.01.20 
                                  HP F90 v2.4
                                  HP MPI [not a product] (03/24/2000) B6060BA
    IRIX 6.5                      MIPSpro cc 7.30
    IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.3.1.2m
    Linux 2.4.4                   gcc 2.95.3
                                  g++ 2.95.3
    Linux 2.2.18smp               gcc 2.95.2
                                  gcc 2.95.2 with mpich 1.2.1
                                  g++ 2.95.2
                                  pgf90 3.2-4
    OSF1 V5.1                     Compaq C V6.3-028         
                                  Compaq Fortran V5.4-1283
    SunOS 5.7                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0
     (Solaris 2.7)                Workshop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C++ 5.0 
                                  Workshop Compilers 5.0 98/10/25 
                                  FORTRAN 90 2.0 Patch 107356-04 
    SunOS 5.8/32                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C 5.2 2000/09/11
     (Solaris 2.8)                Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 Fortran 95 6.1 
                                          Patch 109503-07 2001/08/11
                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C++ 5.2 Patch
                                        109508-04 2001/07/11
    SunOS 5.8/64                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C 5.2 2000/09/11
     (Solaris 2.8)                Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 Fortran 95 6.1 
                                          Patch 109503-07 2001/08/11
                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C++ 5.2 Patch
                                        109508-04 2001/07/11
    TFLOPS r1.0.4 v4.0.8 i386     pgcc Rel 3.1-4i with mpich-1.2.1 with
                                          local modifications
    IA-32 Linux 2.2.10smpx        cc Intel 5.0.1
                                  egcs-2.91.66
    IA-64 Linux 2.4.16 ia64       gcc version 2.96 20000731
                                  Intel(R) C++ Itanium(TM) Compiler 
                                  for the Itanium(TM)-based applications,
                                  Version 6.0 Beta, Build 20010905       
    Windows 2000 (NT5.0)          MSVC++ 6.0
                                  DEC Visual Fortran 6.0
    Windows NT4.0                 MSVC++ 6.0
                                  DEC Visual Fortran 6.0
    Windows NT4.0                 Code Warrior 6.0
    Windows 98                    MSVC++ 6.0
                                  DEC Visual Fortran 6.0


Supported Configuration Features Summary
========================================

    In the tables below
          y  = tested and supported
          n  = not supported or not tested in this release
          x  = not working in this release
         ( ) = footnote appears below second table


    Platform       C  C         F90  F90       C++   Shared     zlib  Tools
                      parallel       parallel        libraries
                                                     (5)
    Solaris2.7     y  y (1)     y    n         y     y          y     y
    Solaris2.8 64  y  n         y    n         y     y          y     y
    Solaris2.8 32  y  n         y    n         y     y          y     y
    IA-64          y  n         n    n         n     n          y     y 
    IRIX6.5        y  y (1)     n    n         n     y          y     y
    IRIX64_6.5 64  y  y (2)     y    y         n     y          y     y
    IRIX64_6.5 32  y  y (2)     n    n         n     y          y     y
    HPUX10.20      y  n         y    n         n     y          y     y
    HPUX11.00      y  y         y    n         n     y          y     y
    HPUX11 SysV    y  y         y    n         n     y          y     y
    DECOSF         y  n         y    n         y     y          y     y
    T3E            y  y         y    y         n     n          y     y
    SV1            y  n         y    n         n     n          y     y
    TFLOPS         y  y (1)     n    n         n     n          y     y (4)
    AIX-4.3 SP2    y  y         y    y         n     n          y     n
    AIX-4.3 SP3    y  y         y    y         y     n          y     n
    Win2000        y  n         y    n         y (6) y          y     y
    Win98          y  n         y    n         y (6) y          y     y
    WinNT          y  n         y    n         y (6) y          y     y
    WinNT CW       y  n         n    n         n     n          y     y
    FreeBSD        y  n         n    n         y     y          y     y
    Linux 2.2      y  y (1)     y    n         y     y          y     y
    Linux 2.4      y  y (1)     n    n         y     y          y     y


    Platform       1.2            static-   Thread-  SRB  GASS	STREAM-
                   compatibility  exec      safe                VFD
    Solaris2.7     n              x         y        n    n     y
    Solaris2.8 64  n              y         n        n    n     y
    Solaris2.8 32  n              x         n        n    n     y
    IA-64          n              n         n        n    n     y   
    IRIX6.5        n              x         y        n    n     y
    IRIX64_6.5 64  n              x         y        n    y     y
    IRIX64_6.5 32  n              x         y        n    y     y
    HPUX10.20      n              y         n        n    n     y
    HPUX11.00      n              x         n        n    n     y
    HPUX11 SysV    n              x         n        n    n     y
    DECOSF         n              y         n        n    n     y
    T3E            n              y         n        n    n     y
    SV1            n              y         n        n    n     y
    TFLOPS         n              y         n        n    n     n
    AIX-4.3 SP2    n              y (3)     n        n    n     y
    AIX-4.3 SP3    n              y         n        n    n     y
    Win2000        n              y         n        n    n     n
    Win98          n              y         n        n    n     n
    WinNT          n              y         n        n    n     n
    WinNT CW       n              n         n        n    n     n
    FreeBSD        n              y         y        n    n     y
    Linux 2.2      n              y         y        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4      n              y         y        n    n     y


    Footnotes:  (1) Using mpich.
                (2) Using mpt and mpich.
                (3) When configured with static-exec enabled, tests fail 
                    in serial mode.
                (4) No HDF4-related tools.
                (5) Shared libraries are provided only for the C library.
		(6) Exception of (5): DLL is available for C++ API on Windows


Known Problems
==============

    * Datasets or attributes which have a variable-length string datatype are
      not printing correctly with h5dump and h5ls.

    * When a dataset with the variable-legth datatype is overwritten, 
      the library can develop memory leaks that cause the file to become 
      unnecessarily large.  This is planned to be fixed in the next release.

    * On the SV1, the h5ls test fails due to a difference between the 
      SV1 printf precision and the printf precision on other platforms.


    * The h5dump tests may fail to match the expected output in some
      platforms (e.g. SP2 parallel, Windows) where the error messages
      directed to "stderr" do not appear in the "right order" with output
      from stdout.  This is not an error.

    * The --enable-static-exec configure flag fails to compile for HP-UX
      11.00 platforms.

    * The executables are always dynamic on IRIX64 6.5(64 and n32) and 
      IRIX 6.5 even if they are configured with --enable-static-exec.

    * IRIX 6.5 fails to compile if configured with --enable-static-exec.
    
    * The HDF5_MPI_OPT_TYPES optimization code in the parallel HDF5 will cause
      a hang in some cases when chunked storage is used.  This is now set to
      be off by default.  One may turn it on by setting environment variable
      HDF5_MPI_OPT_TYPES to a non-zero value such as 1.

    * On IA64 systems one has to use -DIA64 compilation flag to compile
      h4toh5 and h5toh4 utilites. After configuration step manually modify
      Makefile in the tools/h4toh4 and tools/h5toh4 directories to add 
      -DIA64 to the compilation flags.

    * On IA32 ansd IA64 systems, if you use a compiler other than GCC 
      (such as Intel's ecc compiler), you will need to modify the generated
      "libtool" program after configuration is finished. On or around line 102 
      of the libtool file, there are lines which look like:

          # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
          wl=""

      change the lines to this:

          # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
          wl="-Wl,"


%%%%1.4.2%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.4.2 (31/July/01)

10.   Release Information for hdf5-1.4.2 
=================================================================


INTRODUCTION

This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.4.1 and
HDF5-1.4.2, and contains information on the platforms tested and
known problems in HDF5-1.4.2.

The HDF5 documentation can be found on the NCSA ftp server
(ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory:

     /HDF/HDF5/docs/

For more information look at the HDF5 home page at:
   
    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to:

    hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu


CONTENTS

- New Features
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.1
- Documentation
- Platforms Tested
- Supported Configuration Features
- Known Problems


New Features
============

    * File sizes greater than 2GB are now supported on Linux systems with
      version 2.4.x or higher kernels.
    * Added a global string variable H5_lib_vers_info_g which holds the
      HDF5 library version information.  This can be used to identify
      an hdf5 library or hdf5 application binary.
      Also added a verification of the consistency between H5_lib_vers_info_g
      and other version information in the source code.
    * Parallel HDF5 now runs on the HP V2500 and HP N4000 machines.
    * F90 API:
        - Added aditional parameter "dims" to the h5dread_f/h5dwrite_f and
          h5aread_f/h5awrite_f subroutines.  This parameter is a 1-D array 
          of size 7 and contains the sizes of the data buffer dimensions. 
          This change enables portability between Windows and UNIX platforms.
          In previous versions of the F90 APIs, the data buffer parameters of 
          the above functions were declared as assumed-shape arrays, which 
          were passed to the C functions by a descriptor.  There is no 
          portable means, however, of passing descriptors from F90 to C, 
          causing portability problems between Windows and UNIX and among
          UNIX platforms.  With this change, the data buffers are assumed-
          size arrays, which can be portably passed to the C functions.
    * F90 static library is available on Windows platforms. 
      See INSTALL_Windows_withF90.txt for details.
    * F90 APIs are available on HPUX 11.00 and 10.20 and IBM SP platforms.
    * H5 <-> GIF convertor has been added. This is available under 
      tools/gifconv. The convertor supports the ability to create animated
      gifs as well.
    * Verified correct operation of library on Solaris 2.8 in both 64-bit and
      32-bit compilation modes.  See INSTALL document for instructions on
      compiling the distribution with 64-bit support.
    * Added support for the Metrowerks Code Warrior compiler for Windows.  
    * For H4->H5 converter utility, added a new option to choose not to convert
      HDF4 specified attributes(reference number, class) into HDF5 attributes.
    * Added support chunking and compression in SDS and image in H4->H5 converter. 
      Currently HDF5 only supports gzip compression, so by default an HDF4 file 
      with any other compression method will be converted into an HDF5 file in 
      gzip compression. 
    * correct the order or reading HDF4 image array in H4->H5 conversion.  
    * Added new parallel hdf5 tests in t_mpi.  The new test checks if the
      filesystem or the MPI-IO can really handle greater than 2GB files.
      If it fails, it prints information message only without failing the
      test.
    * Added a parallel HDF5 example examples/ph5example.c to illustrate
      the basic way of using parallel HDF5.
    * Added a new public macro, H5_VERS_INFO, which is a string holding
      the HDF5 library version information.  This string is also compiled
      into all HDF5 binary code which helps to identify the version information
      of the binary code.  One may use the Unix strings command on the binary
      file and looks for the pattern "HDF5 library version".
    * Added new checking in H5check_version() to verify the five HDF5 version
      information macros (H5_VERS_MAJOR, H5_VERS_MINOR, H5_VERS_RELEASE,
      H5_VERS_SUBRELEASE and H5_VERS_INFO) are consistent.
      
         
Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.1 Release
==================================

    * Fixed bug with non-zero userblock sizes causing raw data to not
      write correctly.
    * Fixed problems with Pablo build and linking with non-standard MPI I/O.
    * Fixed build on Linux systems with --enable-static-exec flag. It now
      works correctly.
    * IMPORTANT: Fixed file metadata corruption bug which could cause 
      metadata data loss in certain situations.
    * The allocation by alignment (H5Pset_alignment) feature code somehow
      got dropped in some 1.3.x version. Re-implemented it with "new and
      improved" algorithm.  It keeps track of "wasted" file-fragment in
      the free-list too.
    * Removed limitation that the data transfer buffer size needed to be
      set for datasets whose dimensions were too large for the 'all' 
      selection code to handle.  Any size dimensioned datasets should be 
      handled correctly now.
    * Changed behavior of H5Tget_member_type to correctly emulate HDF5 v1.2.x
      when --enable-hdf5v1_2 configure flag is enabled.
    * Added --enable-linux-lfs flag to allow more control over whether to 
      enable or disable large file support on Linux.
    * Fixed various bugs releated to SDS dimensional scale conversions in H4->H5 
      converter.
    * Fixed a bug to correctly convert HDF4 objects with fill value into HDF5.
    * Fixed a bug of H5pubconf.h causing repeated definitions if it is included
      more than once.  hdf5.h now includes H5public.h which includes
      H5pubconf.h.  Applications should #include hdf5.h which handles multiple
      inclusion correctly.
    * Fixed H5FDmpio.h to be C++ friendly by making Parallel HDF5 API's to be
      external to C++.
    * Fixed a bug in H5FD_mpio_flush() that might result in negative file seek
      if both MPIO and Split-file drivers are used together.



Documentation
=============

    * The H5T_conv_t and H5T_cdata_t structures are now properly defined
      in the H5Tregister entry in the "H5T" section of the "HDF5 Reference 
      Manual" and described in detail in section 12, "Data Conversions," in 
      the "Datatypes" chapter of the "HDF5 User's Guide."
    * The new tools h52gif and gif2h5 have been added to the "Tools" section
      of the Reference Manual.
    * A "Freespace Management" section has been added to the "Performance" 
      chapter of the User's Guide.
    * Several user-reported bugs have been fixed since Release 1.4.1.
    * The "HDF5 Image and Palette Specification" (in the "HDF5 Application
      Developer's Guide") has been heavily revised.  Based on extensive user 
      feedback and input from visualization software developers, Version 1.2 
      of the image specification is substantially different from prior 
      versions.


Platforms Tested
================

    AIX 4.3.3.0 (IBM SP powerpc)  xlc 3.6.6.0
                                  mpcc_r 3.6.6.0
                                  xlf 07.01.0000.0002
                                  mpxlf 07.01.0000.0002
    AIX 4.3 (IBM SP RS6000)       C for AIX Compiler, Version 5.0.2.0
                                  xlf 7.1.0.2
                                  poe 2.4.0.14 (includes mpi)
    Cray T3E sn6711 2.0.5.49a     Cray Standard C Version 6.5.0.1
    Cray SV1 10.0.0.2             Cray Standard C Version 6.5.0.1  
                                  Cray Fortran Version 3.5.0.1
    FreeBSD 4.3                   gcc 2.95.3
                                  g++ 2.95.3
    HP-UX B.10.20                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.10.32.30
                                  HP F90 v2.3
    HP-UX B.11.00                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.11.01.20 
                                  HP F90 v2.4
    HP-UX B.11.00 SysV            HP C  HP92453-01 A.11.01.20 
                                  HP F90 v2.4
    IRIX 6.5                      MIPSpro cc 7.30
    IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.3.1.2m
    Linux 2.4.4                   gcc 2.95.3
                                  g++ 2.95.3
    Linux 2.2.18smp               gcc 2.95.2
                                  gcc 2.95.2 with mpich 1.2.1
                                  g++ 2.95.2
                                  pgf90 3.2-4
    OSF1 V4.0                     DEC-V5.2-040 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (Rev 564)
                                  Digital Fortran 90 V4.1-270
    SunOS 5.6                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0 
     (Solaris 2.6)                WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/10/25 FORTRAN 90 
                                          2.0 Patch 107356-04
    SunOS 5.7                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0
     (Solaris 2.7)                Workshop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C++ 5.0 
                                  Workshop Compilers 5.0 98/10/25 FORTRAN 90
                                          2.0 Patch 107356-04 
    SunOS 5.8/32                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C 5.2 2000/09/11
     (Solaris 2.8)                Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 Fortran 95 6.1 
                                          2000/09/11
                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C++ 5.2 2000/09/11
    SunOS 5.8/64                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C 5.2 2000/09/11
     (Solaris 2.8)                Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 Fortran 95 6.1 
                                          2000/09/11
                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C++ 5.2 2000/09/11
    TFLOPS r1.0.4 v4.0.7 i386     pgcc Rel 3.1-4i with mpich-1.2.1 with
                                          local modifications
    Windows 2000 (NT5.0)          MSVC++ 6.0
    Windows NT4.0                 MSVC++ 6.0
                                  DEC Visual Fortran 6.0
    Windows NT4.0                 Code Warrior 6.0
    Windows 98                    MSVC++ 6.0
                                  DEC Visual Fortran 6.0


Supported Configuration Features Summary
========================================

    In the tables below
          y  = tested and supported
          n  = not supported or not tested in this release
          x  = not working in this release
         ( ) = footnote appears below second table


    Platform       C  C         F90  F90       C++  Shared     zlib  Tools
                      parallel       parallel       libraries
                                                    (5)
    Solaris2.6     y  n         y    n         y    y          y     y
    Solaris2.7     y  y (1)     y    n         y    y          y     y
    Solaris2.8 64  y  n         n    n         y    y          y     y
    Solaris2.8 32  y  n         y    n         y    y          y     y
    IRIX6.5        y  y (1)     n    n         n    y          y     y
    IRIX64_6.5 64  y  y (2)     y    y         n    y          y     y
    IRIX64_6.5 32  y  y (2)     n    n         n    y          y     y
    HPUX10.20      y  n         y    n         n    y          y     y
    HPUX11.00      y  n         y    n         n    y          y     y
    HPUX11 SysV    y  n         y    n         n    y          y     y
    DECOSF         y  n         y    n         n    y          y     y
    T3E            y  y         y    y         n    n          y     y
    SV1            y  n         y    n         n    n          y     y
    TFLOPS         y  y (1)     n    n         n    n          y     y (4)
    AIX-4.3 SP2    y  y         y    y         n    n          y     n
    AIX-4.3 SP3    y  y         y    y         n    n          y     n
    Win2000        y  n         n    n         n    y          y     y
    Win98          y  n         y    n         n    y          y     y
    WinNT          y  n         y    n         n    y          y     y
    WinNT CW       y  n         n    n         n    n          y     y
    FreeBSD        y  n         n    n         y    y          y     y
    Linux 2.2      y  y (1)     y    n         y    y          y     y
    Linux 2.4      y  y (1)     n    n         y    y          y     y


    Platform       1.2            static-   Thread-  SRB  GASS	STREAM-
                   compatibility  exec      safe                VFD
    Solaris2.6     y              x         n        n    n     y
    Solaris2.7     y              x         y        n    n     y
    Solaris2.8 64  y              y         n        n    n     y
    Solaris2.8 32  y              x         n        n    n     y
    IRIX6.5        y              x         y        n    n     y
    IRIX64_6.5 64  y              x         n        n    n     y
    IRIX64_6.5 32  y              x         n        n    n     y
    HPUX10.20      y              y         n        n    n     y
    HPUX11.00      y              x         n        n    n     y
    HPUX11 SysV    y              x         n        n    n     y
    DECOSF         y              y         n        n    n     y
    T3E            y              y         n        n    n     y
    SV1            y              y         n        n    n     y
    TFLOPS         y              y         n        n    n     n
    AIX-4.3 SP2    y              y (3)     n        n    n     y
    AIX-4.3 SP3    y              y         n        n    n     y
    Win2000        y              y         n        n    n     n
    Win98          n              y         n        n    n     n
    WinNT          y              y         n        n    n     n
    WinNT CW       n              n         n        n    n     n
    FreeBSD        y              y         n        n    n     y
    Linux 2.2      y              y         y        n    n     y
    Linux 2.4      y              y         y        n    n     y


    Footnotes:  (1) Using mpich.
                (2) Using mpt and mpich.
                (3) When configured with static-exec enabled, tests fail 
                    in serial mode.
                (4) No HDF4-related tools.
                (5) Shared libraries are provided only for the C library.


Known Problems
==============

    * When a dataset with the variable-legth datatype is overwritten, 
      the library can develop memory leaks that cause the file to become 
      unnecessarily large.  This is planned to be fixed in the next release.

    * On the SV1, the h5ls test fails due to a difference between the 
      SV1 printf precision and the printf precision on other platforms.

    * The h5dump tests may fail to match the expected output in some
      platforms (e.g. SP2 parallel, Windows) where the error messages
      directed to "stderr" do not appear in the "right order" with output
      from stdout.  This is not an error.

    * The --enable-static-exec configure flag fails to compile for HP-UX
      11.00 platforms.

    * The executables are always dynamic on IRIX64 6.5(64 and n32) and 
      IRIX 6.5 even if they are configured with --enable-static-exec.

    * IRIX 6.5 fails to compile if configured with --enable-static-exec.
    
    * For 24-bit image conversion from H4->H5, the current conversion is
      not consistent with HDF5 image specification. 

    * In some cases, and SDS with an UNLIMITED dimension that has not
      been written (current size = 0) is not converted correctly.

    * After "make install" or "make install-doc" one may need to reload
      the source from the tar file before doing another build.

    * The HDF5_MPI_OPT_TYPES optimization code in the parallel HDF5 will cause
      a hang in some cases when chunked storage is used.  This is now set to
      be off by default.  One may turn it on by setting environment variable
      HDF5_MPI_OPT_TYPES to a non-zero value such as 1.

%%%%1.4.1%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.4.1 (April/01)

9.   Release Information for hdf5-1.4.1 (April/01)
=====================================================================


 
                       HDF5 Release 1.4.1


INTRODUCTION

This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.4.0 and
HDF5-1.4.1, and contains information on the platforms tested and
known problems in HDF5-1.4.1.

The HDF5 documentation can be found on the NCSA ftp server
(ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory:

     /HDF/HDF5/docs/

For more information look at the HDF5 home page at:
   
    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to:

    hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu


CONTENTS

- New Features
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.0
- Documentation
- Platforms Tested
- Supported Configuration Features
- Known Problems


New Features
============

   * XML output option for h5dump utility.
  
     A new option --xml to output data in XML format has been added. The
     XML output contains a complete description of the file, marked up in
     XML. 

     The XML conforms to the HDF5 Document Type Definition (DTD), which
     is available at:

       http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/DTDs/HDF5-File.dtd

     The XML output is suitable for use with other tools, including the
     Java Tools:

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


Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.0 Release
==================================

   * h4toh5 utility: conversion of images is fixed

     Earlier releases of the h4toh5 utility produced images that did not
     correctly conform to the HDF5 Image and Palette Specification.

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

     Several required HDF5 attributes are omitted, and the dataspace
     is reversed (i.e., the ht. and width of the image dataset is
     incorrectly described.)  For more information, please see:

       http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/H5Image/ImageDetails.htm

   * Fixed bug with contiguous hyperslabs not being detected, causing
     slower I/O than necessary.
   * Fixed bug where non-aligned hyperslab I/O on chunked datasets was
     causing errors during I/O
   * The RCSID string in H5public.h was causing the C++ compiling problem
     because when it was included multiple times, C++ did not like
     multiple definitions of the same static variable. All occurance of
     RCSID definition are removed since we have not used it consistently
     before.


Documentation
=============

    PDF and Postscript versions of the following documents are available 
    for this release:
        Document                                 Filename
        --------                                 --------
        Introduction to HDF5                     H5-R141-Introduction.pdf
        HDF5 Reference Manual                    H5-R141-RefManual.pdf 
        C++ APIs to HDF5 documents               H5-R141-Cplusplus.pdf
        Fortran90 APIs to HDF5 documents         H5-R141-Fortran90.pdf

        PDF and Postscript files containing      H5-R141-DocSet.pdf
            all of the above                     H5-R141-DocSet.ps

    These files are not included in this distribution, but are available 
    via the Web or FTP at the following locations:
        http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc/PSandPDF/
        ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF5/docs/

    While these documents are labeled Release 1.4.1, they describe 
    Release 1.4.0 as well.  


Platforms Tested
================

Due to the nature of this release only C, C++ libraries and tools were tested.

    AIX 4.3.3.0 (IBM SP powerpc)  xlc 3.6.6
                                  mpcc_r 3.6.6
    Cray T3E sn6711 2.0.5.47      Cray Standard C Version 6.5.0.0
    Cray SV1 10.0.0.8             Cray Standard C Version 6.5.0.0
    FreeBSD 4.3                   gcc 2.95.2
    HP-UX B.10.20                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.10.32.30
    HP-UX B.11.00                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.11.01.20
    IRIX 6.5                      MIPSpro cc 7.30
    IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.3.1m
    Linux 2.2.18smp               gcc-2.95.2
                                  g++ 2.95.2
    OSF1 V4.0                     DEC-V5.2-040
                                  Digital Fortran 90 V4.1-270
    SunOS 5.6                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0 
     (Solaris 2.6)                

    SunOS 5.7                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0
     (Solaris 2.7)                Workshop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C++ 5.0
    TFLOPS r1.0.4 v4.0            mpich-1.2.1 with local changes
    Windows NT4.0, 2000 (NT5.0)   MSVC++ 6.0
    Windows 98                    MSVC++ 6.0


Supported Configuration Features Summary
========================================

    * See "Supported Configuration Features Summary" section for the HDF5
      1.4.0 release in the HISTORY.txt file.

Known Problems
==============

    * The h5dump tests may fail to match the expected output in some
      platforms (e.g. SP2 parallel, Windows) where the error messages
      directed to "stderr" do not appear in the "right order" with output
      from stdout.  This is not an error.

    * The --enable-static-exec configure flag fails to compile for HP-UX
      11.00 platforms.

    * The executable are always dynamic on IRIX64 6.5(64 and n32) and 
      IRIX 6.5 even if they are configured with --enable-static-exec.

    * The shared library failed compilation on IRIX 6.5.
    
    * After "make install" or "make install-doc" one may need to reload the source
      from the tar file before doing another build.

    * See "Known problems" section for the HDF5 1.4.0 release in the
      HISTORY.txt file.

%%%%1.4.0%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.4.0 (2/22/01)

8.  Release Information for hdf5-1.4.0
===================================================================
 
                       HDF5 Release 1.4.0


INTRODUCTION

This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.2.0 and
HDF5-1.4.0, and contains information on the platforms tested and
known problems in HDF5-1.4.0. For more details check the HISTORY.txt
file in the HDF5 source.

The HDF5 documentation can be found on the NCSA ftp server
(ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory:

     /HDF/HDF5/docs/

For more information look at the HDF5 home page at:
   
    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to:

    hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu


CONTENTS

- New Features
- h4toh5 Utility 
- F90 Support
- C++ Support
- Pablo Support 
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.2.0 
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.0-beta2
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.0
- Documentation
- Platforms Tested
- Supported Configuration Features
- Known Problems


New Features
============
   * The Virtual File Layer, VFL, was added to replace the old file
     drivers. It also provides an API for user defined file drivers.
   * New features added to snapshots. Use 'snapshot help' to see a
     complete list of features.
   * Improved configure to detect if MPIO routines are available when
     parallel mode is requested.
   * Added Thread-Safe support. Phase I implemented. See:

        http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/papers/mthdf/MTHDFpaper.htm

     for more details.
   * Added data sieve buffering to raw data I/O path. This is enabled
     for all VFL drivers except the mpio & core drivers. Setting the
     sieve buffer size is controlled with the new API function,
     H5Pset_sieve_buf_size(), and retrieved with H5Pget_sieve_buf_size().
   * Added new Virtual File Driver, Stream VFD, to send/receive entire
     HDF5 files via socket connections.
   * As parts of VFL, HDF-GASS and HDF-SRB are also added to this
     release. To find out details, please read INSTALL_VFL file. 
   * Increased maximum number of dimensions for a dataset (H5S_MAX_RANK)
     from 31 to 32 to align with HDF4 & netCDF.
   * Added 'query' function to VFL drivers.  Also added 'type' parameter to
     VFL 'read' & 'write' calls, so they are aware of the type of data
     being accessed in the file.  Updated the VFL document also.
   * A new h4toh5 utility, to convert HDF4 files to analogous HDF5 files.
   * Added a new array datatype to the datatypes which can be created.  
     Removed "array fields" from compound datatypes (use an array datatype 
     instead).
   * Parallel HDF5 works correctly with mpich-1.2.1 on Solaris, SGI, Linux.
   * You can now install the HDF5 documentation using the
     ``make install-doc'' command. The documentation is installed in the
     $(prefix)/doc directory where $(prefix) is the prefix specified by
     the (optional) ``--prefix'' flag during configuration.
   * HDF5 can operate correctly in the OpenMP environment in a limited way.
     Check doc/html/TechNotes/openmp-hdf5.html for details.


h4toh5 Utility 
==============
    The h4toh5 utility is a new utility that converts an HDF4 file to an 
    HDF5 file.  For details, see the document, "Mapping HDF4 Objects to 
    HDF5 Objects":
       http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/papers/H4-H5MappingGuidelines.pdf

    Known Bugs:

      The h4toh5 utility produces images that do not correctly conform
      to the HDF5 Image and Palette Specification. 

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

      Several required HDF5 attributes are omitted, and the dataspace 
      is reversed (i.e., the ht. and width of the image dataset is 
      incorrectly described.)  For more information, please see:

        http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/H5Image/ImageDetails.html
 
      This bug has been fixed for the snapshot of hdf5 1.4 release. March 12th,2001

    Known Limitations of the h4toh5 release
    ---------------------------------------------

    1. Error handlings

       h4toh5 utility will print out an error message when an error occurs.

    2. String Datatype

    HDF4 has no 'string' type. String valued data are usually defined as
    an array of 'char' in HDF4. The h4toh5 utility will generally map
    these to HDF5 'String' types rather than array of char, with the
    following additional rules:

       * For the data of an HDF4 SDS, image, and palette, if the data is
         declared 'DFNT_CHAR8' it will be assumed to be integer and will
         be an H5T_INTEGER type.
       * For attributes of any HDF4 object, data of type 'DFNT_CHAR8'
         will be converted to an HDF5 'H5T_STRING' type.
       * For an HDF4 Vdata, it is difficult to determine whether data 
         of type 'DFNT_CHAR8' is intended to be bytes or characters. The
         h4toh5 utility will consider them to be C characters, and will
         convert them to an HDF5 'H5T_STRING' type.


    3. Compression, Chunking and External Storage

    Chunking is supported, but compression and external storage is not.

    An HDF4 object that uses chunking will be converted to an HDF5 file
    with analogous chunked storage.

    An HDF4 object that uses compression will be converted to an
    uncompressed HDF5 object.  

    An HDF4 object that uses external storage will be converted to an
    HDF5 object without external storage.  

    4. Memory Use

    This version of the h4toh5 utility copies data from HDF4 objects
    in a single read followed by a single write to the HDF5 object. For
    large objects, this requires a very large amount of memory, which may
    be extremely slow or fail on some platforms.

    Note that a dataset that has only been partly written will
    be read completely, including uninitialized data, and all the
    data will be written to the HDF5 object.

    5. Platforms

    The h4toh5 utility requires HDF5-1.4.0 and HDF4r1.4

    h4toh5 utility has been tested on all platforms listed below (see 
    section "Platforms Tested") except TFLOPS.

 
F90 Support
===========
    This is the first release of the HDF5 Library with fully integrated 
    F90 API support.  The Fortran Library is created when the 
    --enable-fortran flag is specified during configuration.

    Not all F90 subroutines are implemented. Please refer to the HDF5 
    Reference Manual for more details.
   
    F90 APIs are available for the Solaris 2.6 and 2.7, Linux, DEC UNIX, 
    T3E, SV1 and O2K (64 bit option only) platforms. The Parallel version of 
    the HDF5 F90 Library is supported on the O2K and T3E platforms.

    Changes since the last prototype release (July 2000)
    ----------------------------------------------------
       * h5open_f and h5close_f must be called instead of h5init_types and 
         h5close_types.

       * The following subroutines are no longer available: 

             h5pset_xfer_f
             h5pget_xfer_f
             h5pset_mpi_f
             h5pget_mpi_f
             h5pset_stdio_f
             h5pget_stdio_f
             h5pset_sec2_f
             h5pget_sec2_f
             h5pset_core_f
             h5pget_core_f
             h5pset_family_f
             h5pget_family_f
             
       * The following functions have been added:

             h5pset_fapl_mpio_f
             h5pget_fapl_mpio_f
             h5pset_dxpl_mpio_f
             h5pget_dxpl_mpio_f
        
       * In the previous HDF5 F90 releases, the implementation of object 
         references and dataset region references was not portable. This 
         release introduces a portable implementation, but it also introduces 
         changes to the read/write APIs that handle references.  If object or 
         dataset region references are written or read to/from an HDF5 file, 
         h5dwrite_f and h5dread_f must use the extra parameter, n, for the 
         buffer size:

            h5dwrite(read)_f(dset_id, mem_type_id, buf, n, hdferr, &
                                                       ^^^ 
                             mem_space_id, file_space_id, xfer_prp)

         For other datatypes the APIs were not changed. 
              
             
C++ Support
===========
    This is the first release of the HDF5 Library with fully integrated 
    C++ API support. The HDF5 C++ library is built when the --enable-cxx
    flag is specified during configuration.

    Check the HDF5 Reference Manual for available C++ documentation.

    C++ APIs are available for Solaris 2.6 and 2.7, Linux, and FreeBSD. 


Pablo Support
=============
    This version does not allow proper building of the Pablo-instrumented
    version of the library.  A version supporting the pablo build is
    available on the Pablo Website at 
    www-pablo.cs.uiuc.edu/pub/Pablo.Release.5/HDFLibrary/hdf5_v1.4.tar.gz


Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.2.0
==========================

Library
-------
   * The function H5Pset_mpi is renamed as H5Pset_fapl_mpio.
   * Corrected a floating point number conversion error for the Cray J90
     platform. The error did not convert the value 0.0 correctly.
   * Error was fixed which was not allowing dataset region references to
     have their regions retrieved correctly.
   * Corrected a bug that caused non-parallel file drivers to fail in
     the parallel version.
   * Added internal free-lists to reduce memory required by the library
     and H5garbage_collect API function
   * Fixed error in H5Giterate which was not updating the "index"
     parameter correctly.
   * Fixed error in hyperslab iteration which was not walking through the
     correct sequence of array elements if hyperslabs were staggered in a
     certain pattern
   * Fixed several other problems in hyperslab iteration code.
   * Fixed another H5Giterate bug which was causes groups with large
     numbers of objects in them to misbehave when the callback function
     returned non-zero values.
   * Changed return type of H5Aiterate and H5A_operator_t typedef to be
     herr_t, to align them with the dataset and group iterator functions.
   * Changed H5Screate_simple and H5Sset_extent_simple to not allow
     dimensions of size 0 with out the same dimension being unlimited.
   * QAK - 4/19/00 - Improved metadata hashing & caching algorithms to
     avoid many hash flushes and also remove some redundant I/O when
     moving metadata blocks in the file.
   * The "struct(opt)" type conversion function which gets invoked for
     certain compound datatype conversions was fixed for nested compound
     types. This required a small change in the datatype conversion
     function API.
   * Re-wrote lots of the hyperslab code to speed it up quite a bit.
   * Added bounded garbage collection for the free lists when they run
     out of memory and also added H5set_free_list_limits API call to
     allow users to put an upper limit on the amount of memory used for
     free lists.
   * Checked for non-existent or deleted objects when dereferencing one
     with object or region references and disallow dereference.
   * "Time" datatypes (H5T_UNIX_D*) were not being stored and retrieved
     from object headers correctly, fixed now.
   * Fixed H5Dread or H5Dwrite calls with H5FD_MPIO_COLLECTIVE requests
     that may hang because not all processes are transfer the same amount
     of data. (A.K.A. prematured collective return when zero amount data
     requested.) Collective calls that may cause hanging is done via the
     corresponding MPI-IO independent calls.
   * If configure with --enable-debug=all, couple functions would issue
     warning messages to "stderr" that the operation is expensive time-wise.
     This messed up applications (like testings) that did not expect the
     extra output. It is changed so that the warning will be printed only
     if the corresponding Debug key is set.

Configuration
-------------
   * The hdf5.h include file was fixed to allow the HDF5 Library to be
     compiled with other libraries/applications that use GNU autoconf. 
   * Configuration for parallel HDF5 was improved. Configure now attempts
     to link with libmpi.a and/or libmpio.a as the MPI libraries by
     default. It also uses "mpirun" to launch MPI tests by default. It
     tests to link MPIO routines during the configuration stage, rather
     than failing later as before. One can just do "./configure
     --enable-parallel" if the MPI library is in the system library.
   * Added support for pthread library and thread-safe option.
   * The libhdf5.settings file shows the correct machine byte-sex.
   * Added option "--enable-stream-vfd" to configure w/o the Stream VFD.
     For Solaris, added -lsocket to the LIBS list of libraries.

Tools
-----
   * h5dump now accepts both short and long command-line parameters:
         -h, --help          Print a usage message and exit
         -B, --bootblock     Print the content of the boot block
         -H, --header        Print the header only; no data is displayed
         -i, --object-ids    Print the object ids
         -V, --version       Print version number and exit
         -a P, --attribute=P Print the specified attribute
         -d P, --dataset=P   Print the specified dataset
         -g P, --group=P     Print the specified group and all members
         -l P, --soft-link=P Print the value(s) of the specified soft link
         -o F, --output=F    Output raw data into file F
         -t T, --datatype=T  Print the specified named data type
         -w #, --width=#     Set the number of columns

     P - is the full path from the root group to the object.
     T - is the name of the data type.
     F - is a filename.
     # - is an integer greater than 1.
   * A change from the old way command line parameters were interpreted
     is that multiple attributes, datasets, groups, soft-links, and
     object-ids cannot be specified with just one flag but you have to
     use a flag with each object. I.e., instead of doing this:

       h5dump -a /attr1 /attr2 foo.h5

     do this:

       h5dump -a /attr1 -a /attr2 foo.h5

     The cases are similar for the other object types.
   * h5dump correctly displays compound datatypes.
   * Corrected an error in h5toh4 which did not convert the 32bits
     int from HDF5 to HDF4 correctly for the T3E platform.
   * h5dump correctly displays the committed copy of predefined types
     correctly.
   * Added an option, -V, to show the version information of h5dump.
   * Fixed a core dumping bug of h5toh4 when executed on platforms like 
     TFLOPS.
   * The test script for h5toh4 used to not able to detect the hdp
     dumper command was not valid.  It now detects and reports the
     failure of hdp execution.
   * Merged the tools with the 1.2.2 branch. Required adding new
     macros, VERSION12 and VERSION13, used in conditional compilation.
     Updated the Windows project files for the tools.            
   * h5dump displays opaque and bitfield data correctly.
   * h5dump and h5ls can browse files created with the Stream VFD
     (eg. "h5ls <hostname>:<port>").
   * h5dump has a new feature "-o <filename>" which outputs the raw data
     of the dataset into ascii text file <filename>.
   * h5toh4 used to converts hdf5 strings type to hdf4 DFNT_INT8 type.
     Corrected to produce hdf4 DFNT_CHAR type instead.
   * h5dump and h5ls displays array data correctly.


Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.0-beta2
================================
   * Fixed a bug in the conversion from a little endian double to a big 
     endian float in some special cases.
   * Corrected configuration error which was not including compression 
     support correctly. 
   * Cleaned up lots of warnings.
   * Changed a few h5dump command line switches and added long versions of
     the switches.
   * Changed parameters for H5Tconvert, H5Pset_bufer and H5Pget_buffer from
     size_t to hsize_t
   * Fixed fairly obscure bug in hyperslab I/O which could (in rare cases)
     not copy all the data during a transfer.
   * Removed ragged array code from library.
   * F90 library and module files are installed properly now on all supported 
     platforms.


Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.4.0 Release
==================================

   * Fixed bug with contiguous hyperslabs not being detected, causing
     slower I/O than necessary.
   * Fixed bug where non-aligned hyperslab I/O on chunked datasets was
     causing errors during I/O
   * Implemented XML support in h5dump.


Documentation
=============
   * A new document summarizing the changes in the library leading up to 
     the current release has been added: 
           HDF5 Software Changes from Release to Release
     This document is in the Application Developer's Guide and is of 
     particular interest to developers who must keep an application 
     synchronized with the library.
   * The documentation for the Fortran90 and C++ APIs is linked to the
     opening page of the Reference Manual.  Fortran90 functions are 
     individually referenced from the corresponding C functions through-
     out the Reference Manual.
   * User's Guide and Reference Manual were updated to reflect changed 
     function syntax and to fix reported bugs. 
   * Functions that are new at this release were added to the Reference 
     Manual.  
   * Functions that have been removed from the library were removed from 
     the User's Guide and the Reference Manual.
   * PostScript and PDF versions of the Release 1.4 document set are 
     not available at the time of Release 1.4.0.

   
Platforms Tested
================
    AIX 4.3.3.0 (IBM SP powerpc)  xlc 3.6.6
                                  mpcc_r 3.6.6
    Cray T3E sn6711 2.0.5.45      Cray Standard C Version 6.4.0.0
                                  Cray Fortran Version 3.4.0.2
    Cray SV1 sn9605 10.0.0.7      Cray Standard C Version 6.4.0.0
                                  Cray Fortran Version 3.4.0.2
    FreeBSD 4.2                   gcc 2.95.2
                                  g++ 2.95.2
    HP-UX B.10.20                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.10.32.30
    HP-UX B.11.00                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.11.00.13
    IRIX 6.5                      MIPSpro cc 7.30
                                  mpich-1.2.1
    IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.3.1m
                                  mpt.1.4.0.2
                                  mpich-1.2.1
    Linux 2.2.16-3smp             gcc-2.95.2
                                  g++ 2.95.2
                                  pgf90 3.1-3
                                  mpich-1.2.1
    OSF1 V4.0                     DEC-V5.2-040
                                  Digital Fortran 90 V4.1-270
    SunOS 5.6                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0 
    (Solaris 2.6)                 WorkShop Compilers 5.0 99/10/25 Fortran 90
                                         2.0 Patch 107356-04
                                  Workshop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C++ 5.0
    SunOS 5.7                     WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C 5.0
     (Solaris 2.7)                WorkShop Compilers 5.0 99/10/25 Fortran 90
                                         2.0 Patch 107356-04
                                  Workshop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 C++ 5.0
                                  mpich-1.2.1
    SunOS 5.5.1                   gcc-2.7.2 
     (Solaris 2.5.1 (x86))
    TFLOPS r1.0.4 v4.0            mpich-1.2.1 with local changes
    Windows NT4.0, 2000 (NT5.0)   MSVC++ 6.0
    Windows 98                    MSVC++ 6.0


Supported Configuration Features Summary
========================================
    In the tables below
          y  = tested and supported
          n  = not supported or not working in this release
         ( ) = footnote appears below table

    Platform       C   C         F90  F90       C++  Shared     zlib   Tools
                       parallel       parallel       libraries
    Solaris2.6     y   n         y    n         y    y          y      y
    Solaris2.7     y   y (1)     y    n         y    y          y      y
    Solarisx86     y   n         n    n         n    y          y      y
    IRIX6.5        y   y (1)     n    n         n    n          y      y
    IRIX64_6.5 64  y   y (2)     y    y         n    y          y      y
    IRIX64_6.5 32  y   y (2)     n    n         n    y          y      y
    HPUX10.20      y   n         n    n         n    y          y      y
    DECOSF         y   n         y    n         n    y          y      y
    T3E            y   y         y    y         n    n          y      y
    SV1            y   n         y    n         n    n          y      y
    TFLOPS         y   y (1)     n    n         n    n          y      y (4)
    AIX-4.3        y   y         n    n         n    n          y      n
    Win2000        y   n         n    n         n    y          y      y
    Win98          y   n         n    n         n    y          y      y
    WinNT          y   n         n    n         n    y          y      y
    FreeBSD        y   n         n    n         y    y          y      y
    Linux          y   y (1)     y    n         y    y          y      y


    Platform       1.2            static-   Thread-  SRB  GASS  STREAM-
                   compatibility  exec      safe                VFD
    Solaris2.6     y              n         n        n    n     y
    Solaris2.7     y              n         y        n    n     y
    Solarisx86     y              n         n        n    n     y
    IRIX6.5        y              n         y        n    n     y
    IRIX64_6.5 64  y              n         n        n    n     y
    IRIX64_6.5 32  y              n         n        n    n     y
    HPUX10.20      y              y         n        n    n     y
    DECOSF         y              y         n        n    n     y
    T3E            y              y         n        n    n     y
    SV1            y              y         n        n    n     y
    TFLOPS         y              y         n        n    n     n
    AIX-4.3        y              y (3)     n        n    n     y
    Win2000        y              y         n        n    n     n
    Win98          y              y         n        n    n     n
    WinNT          y              y         n        n    n     n
    FreeBSD        y              y         n        n    n     y
    Linux          y              n         y        n    n     y

    Footnotes:  (1) Using mpich.
                (2) Using mpt and mpich.
                (3) When configured with static-exec enabled, tests fail 
                    in serial mode.
                (4) No HDF4-related tools.


Known Problems
==============
   * The stream-vfd test uses ip port 10007 for testing.  If another 
     application is already using that port address, the test will hang 
     indefinitely and has to be terminated by the kill command.  To try the 
     test again, change the port address in test/stream_test.c to one not 
     being used in the host.

   * The --enable-static-exec configure flag fails to compile for Solaris
     platforms. This is due to the fact that not all of the system
     libraries on Solaris are available in a static format.

     The --enable-static-exec configure flag also fails to correctly compile
     on Linux platforms using the gcc-2.95.2 compiler.
   
     The --enable-static-exec configure flag also fails to correctly compile
     on IBM SP2 platform for the serial mode.  The parallel mode works fine
     with this option.

     The compilation fails if configured with --enable-static-exec on IRIX 6.5.

     The executable files in hdf5/bin are dynamic-linked for IRIX64 6.5(64 and
     n32 modes) and IRIX 6.5, even though they are compiled with static library.
  
     It is suggested that you don't use this option on these platforms
     during configuration.

   * testhdf5 got bus error with configuration options --prefix and --with-hdf4
     on IRIX 6.5.

   * With the gcc 2.95.2 compiler, HDF 5 uses the `-ansi' flag during
     compilation. The ANSI version of the compiler complains about not being
     able to handle the `long long' datatype with the warning:

           warning: ANSI C does not support `long long'
  
     This warning is innocuous and can be safely ignored.

   * SunOS 5.6 with C WorkShop Compilers 4.2:  Hyperslab selections will 
     fail if library is compiled using optimization of any level.

   * When building hdf5 tools and applications on windows platform, a linking
     warning: defaultlib "LIBC" conflicts with use of other libs will appear
     on debug version when running VC++6.0. This warning doesn't affect building
     and testing hdf5 applications. We will continue investigating this.

   * h5toh4 converter fails two cases(tstr.h5 and tmany.h5) for release dll 
     version on windows 2000 and NT.  The reason is possibly due to Windows NT 
     DLL convention on freeing memory. It seems that memory cannot be freed
     across library or DLL. It is still under investigation.

   * HDF-GASS testings and testhdf5 in the test directory will get bus error if
     the configured with --with-gass.

   * HDF-SRB testing got segmentation error on Solaris 2.7.
    
   * The Stream VFD was not tested yet under Windows.
     It is not supported in the TFLOPS machine.

   * Shared library option is broken for IBM SP and some Origin 2000 platforms.
     One needs to run ./configure with '--disable-shared --enable-static'.

   * The ./dsets tests failed in the TFLOPS machine if the test program,
     dsets.c, is compiled with the -O option.  The hdf5 library still works
     correctly with the -O option.  The test program works fine if it is
     compiled with -O1 or -O0.  Only -O (same as -O2) causes the test
     program to fail.

   * Certain platforms give false negatives when testing h5ls:
       - Solaris x86 2.5.1, Cray T3E and Cray J90 give errors during testing
         when displaying object references in certain files.  These are benign 
         differences due to the difference in sizes of the objects created on
         those platforms.  h5ls appears to be dumping object references
         correctly.
       - Cray J90 give errors during testing when displaying
         some floating-point values.  These are benign differences due to the
         different precision in the values displayed and h5ls appears to be
         dumping floating-point numbers correctly.

   * Before building HDF5 F90 Library from source on Crays (T3E and SV1) 
     replace H5Aff.f90, H5Dff.f90 and H5Pff.f90 files in the fortran/src 
     subdirectory in the top level directory with the Cray-specific files from 
     the ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF5/hdf5-1.4.0/src/crayf90/  directory.

   * The h4toh5 utility produces images that do not correctly conform
     to the HDF5 Image and Palette Specification. 

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

     Several required HDF5 attributes are omitted, and the dataspace 
     is reversed (i.e., the ht. and width of the image dataset is 
     incorrectly described.)  For more information, please see:

         http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/H5Image/ImageDetails.htm

%%%%1.2.2%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.2.2 (6/23/00)

7.  Release Information for hdf5-1.2.2
=================================================================
INTRODUCTION

This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.2.1 and 
HDF5-1.2.2, and contains information on the platforms where HDF5-1.2.2
was tested and known problems in HDF5-1.2.2. 

The HDF5 documentation can be found on the NCSA ftp server 
(ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) in the directory:

     /HDF/HDF5/docs/

For more information look at the HDF5 home page at:
   
    http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to:

    hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu


CONTENTS

- Features Added since HDF5-1.2.1 
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.2.1
- Known Problems
- Platforms Tested


Features Added since HDF5-1.2.1
===============================
   * Added internal free-lists to reduce memory required by the library and
     H5garbage_collect API function.
   * h5dump displays opaque and bitfield types.
   * New features added to snapshots.  Use 'snapshot help' to see a
     complete list of features.
   * Improved configure to detect if MPIO routines are available when
     parallel mode is requested.

Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.2.1
==========================
   * h5dump correctly displays compound datatypes, including simple and
     nested compound types.
   * h5dump correctly displays the committed copy of predefined types.
   * Corrected an error in h5toh4 which did not convert the 32-bit
     int from HDF5 to HDF4 correctly for the T3E platform.
   * Corrected a floating point number conversion error for the
     Cray J90 platform.  The error did not convert the value 0.0
     correctly.
   * Fixed error in H5Giterate which was not updating the "index" parameter
     correctly.
   * Fixed error in hyperslab iteration which was not walking through the
     correct sequence of array elements if hyperslabs were staggered in a
     certain pattern.
   * Fixed several other problems in hyperslab iteration code.
   * Fixed another H5Giterate bug which caused groups with large numbers
     of objects in them to misbehave when the callback function returned
     non-zero values.
   * Changed return type of H5Aiterate and H5A_operator_t typedef to be
     herr_t, to align them with the dataset and group iterator functions.
   * Changed H5Screate_simple and H5Sset_extent_simple to not allow dimensions
     of size 0 without the same dimension being unlimited.
   * Improved metadata hashing & caching algorithms to avoid
     many hash flushes and also removed some redundant I/O when moving metadata
     blocks in the file.
   * The libhdf5.settings file shows the correct machine byte-sex.
   * The "struct(opt)" type conversion function which gets invoked for
     certain compound datatype conversions was fixed for nested compound
     types. This required a small change in the datatype conversion
     function API.

Known Problems
==============

o SunOS 5.6 with C WorkShop Compilers 4.2:  hyperslab selections will 
  fail if library is compiled using optimization of any level.
o TFLOPS: dsets test fails if compiled with optimization turned on.
o J90: tools fail to dispay data for the datasets with a compound datatype. 

Platforms Tested
================

  AIX 4.3.3 (IBM SP)            3.6.6                               | binaries
                                mpicc using mpich 1.1.2             | are not
                                mpicc_r using IBM MPI-IO prototype  | available
  AIX 4.3.2.0 (IBM SP)          xlc 5.0.1.0
  Cray J90 10.0.0.7             cc 6.3.0.2
  Cray T3E 2.0.5.29             cc 6.3.0.2
                                mpt.1.3
  FreeBSD 4.0                   gcc 2.95.2
  HP-UX B.10.20                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.10.32
  HP-UX B.11.00                 HP92453-01 A.11.00.13 HP C Compiler 
                                (static library only, h5toh4 tool is not available) 
  IRIX 6.5                      MIPSpro cc 7.30
  IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.3.1m
                                mpt.1.4

  Linux 2.2.10 SMP              gcc 2.95.1 
                                mpicc(gcc-2.95.1)
                                gcc (egcs-2.91.66)
                                mpicc (egcs-2.91.66)
  Linux 2.2.16 (RedHat 6.2)     gcc 2.95.2

  OSF1 V4.0                     DEC-V5.2-040
  SunOS 5.6                     cc WorkShop Compilers 5.0 no optimization
  SunOS 5.7                     cc WorkShop Compilers 5.0
  SolarisX86 SunOS 5.5.1        gcc version 2.7.2 with --disable-hsizet
  TFLOPS 3.2.1                  pgcc Rel 3.1-3i
                                mpich-1.1.2 with local changes
  Windows NT4.0 sp5             MSVC++ 6.0
  Windows 98                    MSVC++ 6.0
  Windows 2000                  MSVC++ 6.0



%%%%1.2.1%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.2.1

6.  Release Information for hdf5-1.2.1
================================================================


Bug fixes since HDF5-1.2.0
==========================

Configuration
-------------

   * The hdf5.h include file was fixed to allow the HDF5 Library to be compiled
     with other libraries/applications that use GNU autoconf. 
   * Configuration for parallel HDF5 was improved. Configure now attempts to
     link with libmpi.a and/or libmpio.a as the MPI libraries by default.
     It also uses "mpirun" to launch MPI tests by default.  It tests to
     link MPIO routines during the configuration stage, rather than failing
     later as before.  One can just do "./configure --enable-parallel"
     if the MPI library is in the system library.

Library
-------

   * Error was fixed which was not allowing dataset region references to have
     their regions retrieved correctly.
   * Added internal free-lists to reduce memory required by the library and
     H5garbage_collect API function
   * Fixed error in H5Giterate which was not updating the "index" parameter
     correctly.
   * Fixed error in hyperslab iteration which was not walking through the
     correct sequence of array elements if hyperslabs were staggered in a
     certain pattern
   * Fixed several other problems in hyperslab iteration code.

Tests
------

   * Added additional tests for group and attribute iteration.
   * Added additional test for staggered hyperslab iteration.
   * Added additional test for random 5-D hyperslab selection.

Tools
------

   * Added an option, -V, to show the version information of h5dump.
   * Fixed a core dumping bug of h5toh4 when executed on platforms like 
     TFLOPS.
   * The test script for h5toh4 used to not able to detect the hdp
     dumper command was not valid.  It now detects and reports the
     failure of hdp execution.

Documentation
-------------

   * User's Guide and Reference Manual were updated. 
     See doc/html/PSandPDF/index.html for more details. 

   
Platforms Tested:
================
Note: Due to the nature of bug fixes, only static versions of the library and tools were tested.


  AIX 4.3.2 (IBM SP)            3.6.6
  Cray T3E 2.0.4.81             cc 6.3.0.1
                                mpt.1.3
  FreeBSD 3.3-STABLE            gcc 2.95.2
  HP-UX B.10.20                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.10.32
  IRIX 6.5                      MIPSpro cc 7.30
  IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.3.1m
                                mpt.1.3 (SGI MPI 3.2.0.0)

  Linux 2.2.10 SuSE             egcs-2.91.66               configured with
  (i686-pc-linux-gnu)                                      --disable-hsizet
                                mpich-1.2.0 egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux 

  OSF1 V4.0                     DEC-V5.2-040
  SunOS 5.6                     cc WorkShop Compilers 4.2  no optimization
  SunOS 5.7                     cc WorkShop Compilers 5.0
  TFLOPS 2.8                    cicc (pgcc Rel 3.0-5i)
                                mpich-1.1.2 with local changes
  Windows NT4.0 sp5             MSVC++ 6.0

Known Problems:
==============

o SunOS 5.6 with C WorkShop Compilers 4.2:  Hyperslab selections will 
  fail if library is compiled using optimization of any level.



%%%%1.2.0%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.2.0
         
5. Release Information for hdf5-1.2.0
===================================================================

A. Platforms Supported
   -------------------

Operating systems listed below with compiler information and MPI library, if
applicable, are systems that HDF5 1.2.0 was tested on.

                           Compiler & libraries
  Platform                      Information              Comment
  --------                      ----------               -------- 
                                
  AIX 4.3.2 (IBM SP)            3.6.6

  Cray J90 10.0.0.6             cc 6.3.0.0

  Cray T3E 2.0.4.61             cc 6.2.1.0 
                                mpt.1.3

  FreeBSD 3.2                   gcc 2.95.1

  HP-UX B.10.20                 HP C  HP92453-01 A.10.32
                                gcc 2.8.1

  IRIX 6.5                      MIPSpro cc 7.30 

  IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.3.1m
  			        mpt.1.3 (SGI MPI 3.2.0.0)

  Linux 2.2.10                  egcs-2.91.66               configured with
  						         --disable-hsizet
                                                           lbraries: glibc2

  OSF1 V4.0                     DEC-V5.2-040

  SunOS 5.6                     cc WorkShop Compilers 4.2   
                                                           no optimization
  			        gcc 2.8.1

  SunOS 5.7                     cc WorkShop Compilers 5.0
                                gcc 2.8.1
 
  TFLOPS 2.7.1                  cicc (pgcc Rel 3.0-4i)
  			        mpich-1.1.2 with local changes

  Windows NT4.0 intel           MSVC++ 5.0 and 6.0

  Windows NT alpha 4.0          MSVC++ 5.0 

  Windows 98                    MSVC++ 5.0


B. Known Problems
   --------------

* NT alpha 4.0
  Dumper utiliy h5dump fails if linked with DLL.

* SunOS 5.6 with C WorkShop Compilers 4.2
  Hyperslab selections will fail if library is compiled using optimization
  of any level.

 
C. Changes Since Version 1.0.1
   ---------------------------

1. Documentation
   -------------

* More examples

* Updated user guide, reference manual, and format specification.

* Self-contained documentation for installations isolated from the
  Internet.

* HDF5 Tutorial was added to the documentation  

2. Configuration
   -------------

* Better detection and support for MPI-IO.

* Recognition of compilers with known code generation problems.

* Support for various compilers on a single architecture (e.g., the
  native compiler and the GNU compilers).

* Ability to build from read-only media and with different compilers
  and/or options concurrently.

* Added a libhdf5.settings file which summarizes the configuration
  information and is installed along with the library.

* Builds a shared library on most systems that support it.

* Support for Cray T3E, J90 and Windows/NT.

3. Debugging
   ---------

* Improved control and redirection of debugging and tracing messages.

4. Datatypes
   ---------

* Optimizations to compound datatype conversions and I/O operations.

* Added nearly 100 optimized conversion functions for native datatypes 
  including support for non-aligned data.

* Added support for bitfield, opaque, and enumeration types.

* Added distinctions between signed and unsigned char types to the
  list of predefined native hdf5 datatypes.

* Added HDF5 type definitions for C9x types like int32_t.

* Application-defined type conversion functions can handle non-packed
  data.

* Changed the H5Tunregister() function to use wildcards when matching
  conversion functions.  H5Tregister_hard() and H5Tregister_soft()
  were combined into H5Tregister().

* Support for variable-length datatypes (arrays of varying length per
  dataset element). Variable length strings currently supported only
  as variable length arrays of 1-byte integers.

5. Dataspaces
   ----------

* New query functions for selections.

* I/O operations bypass the stripmining loop and go directly to
  storage for certain contiguous selections in the absense of type
  conversions.  In other cases the stripmining buffers are used more
  effectively.

* Reduced the number of I/O requests under certain circumstances,
  improving performance on systems with high I/O latency.

6. Persistent Pointers
   -------------------

* Object (serial and parallel) and dataset region (serial only)
  references are implemented.

7. Parallel Support
   ----------------

* Improved parallel I/O performance.

* Supported new platforms: Cray T3E, Linux, DEC Cluster.

* Use vendor supported version of MPIO on SGI O2K and Cray platforms.

* Improved the algorithm that translates an HDF5 hyperslab selection
  into an MPI type for better collective I/O performance.

8. New API functions 
   -----------------

  a. Property List Interface:
     ------------------------

  H5Pset_xfer		- set data transfer properties
  H5Pset_preserve      - set dataset transfer property list status 
  H5Pget_preserve      - get dataset transfer property list status
  H5Pset_hyper_cache   - indicates whether to cache hyperslab blocks during I/O
  H5Pget_hyper_cache   - returns information regarding the caching of 
                         hyperslab blocks during I/O
  H5Pget_btree_ratios  - sets B-tree split ratios for a dataset 
                         transfer property list
  H5Pset_btree_ratios  - gets B-tree split ratios for a dataset
                         transfer property list
  H5Pset_vlen_mem_manager - sets the memory manager for variable-length 
                            datatype allocation
  H5Pget_vlen_mem_manager - sets the memory manager for variable-length
                            datatype allocation

  b. Dataset Interface:
     ------------------

  H5Diterate           - iterate over all selected elements in a dataspace
  H5Dget_storage_size  - return the amount of storage required for a dataset
  H5Dvlen_reclaim      - reclaim VL datatype memory buffers

  c. Dataspace Interface:
     --------------------
  H5Sget_select_hyper_nblocks   - get number of hyperslab blocks
  H5Sget_select_hyper_blocklist - get the list of hyperslab blocks 
                                  currently selected
  H5Sget_select_elem_npoints    - get the number of element points 
                                  in the current selection
  H5Sget_select_elem_pointlist  - get the list of element points 
                                  currently selected
  H5Sget_select_bounds          - gets the bounding box containing 
                                  the current selection

  d. Datatype Interface:
     -------------------
  H5Tget_super         - return the base datatype from which a 
                         datatype is derived
  H5Tvlen_create       - creates a new variable-length dataype
  H5Tenum_create       - creates a new enumeration datatype
  H5Tenum_insert       - inserts a new enumeration datatype member
  H5Tenum_nameof       - returns the symbol name corresponding to a 
                         specified member of an enumeration datatype
  H5Tvalueof           - return the value corresponding to a 
                         specified member of an enumeration datatype 
  H5Tget_member_value  - return the value of an enumeration datatype member
  H5Tset_tag           - tags an opaque datatype
  H5Tget_tag           - gets the tag associated with an opaque datatype

  e. Identifier Interface:
     ---------------------
  H5Iget_type          - retrieve the type of an object

  f. Reference Interface:
     --------------------
  H5Rcreate            - creates a reference
  H5Rdereference       - open the HDF5 object referenced
  H5Rget_region        - retrieve a dataspace with the specified region selected
  H5Rget_object_type   - retrieve the type of object that an 
                         object reference points to

  g. Ragged Arrays (alpha) (names of those API functions were changed):
     ------------------------------------------------------------------
   H5RAcreate		- create a new ragged array (old name was H5Rcreate)
   H5RAopen		- open an existing array    (old name was H5Ropen)
   H5RAclose		- close a ragged array      (old name was H5Rclose)
   H5RAwrite		- write to an array         (old name was H5Rwrite)
   H5RAread		- read from an array        (old name was H5Rread)


9. Tools
   -----

* Enhancements to the h5ls tool including the ability to list objects
  from more than one file, to display raw hexadecimal data, to
  show file addresses for raw data, to format output more reasonably,
  to show object attributes, and to perform a recursive listing, 

* Enhancements to h5dump: support new data types added since previous
  versions.

* h5toh4: An hdf5 to hdf4 converter.



%%%%1.0.1%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.0.1
         
4.  Changes from Release 1.0.0 to Release 1.0.1
=====================================================================

* [Improvement]: configure sets up the Makefile in the parallel tests
  suit (testpar/) correctly.

* [Bug-Fix]: Configure failed for all IRIX versions other than 6.3.
  It now configures correctly for all IRIX 6.x version.

* Released Parallel HDF5 

     Supported Features:
     ------------------

     HDF5 files are accessed according to the communicator and INFO
     object defined in the property list set by H5Pset_mpi.

     Independent read and write accesses to fixed and extendable dimension
     datasets.

     Collective read and write accesses to fixed dimension datasets.

     Supported Platforms:
     -------------------

     Intel Red
     IBM SP2
     SGI Origin 2000

     Changes In This Release: 
     -----------------------

   o Support of Access to Extendable Dimension Datasets.
     Extendable dimension datasets must use chunked storage methods.
     A new function, H5Dextend, is created to extend the current
     dimensions of a dataset.  The current release requires the
     MPI application must make a collective call to extend the
     dimensions of an extendable dataset before writing to the
     newly extended area.  (The serial does not require the
     call of H5Dextend.  The dimensions of an extendable
     dataset is increased when data is written to beyond the
     current dimensions but within the maximum dimensions.)
     The required collective call of H5Dextend may be relaxed
     in future release.

     This release only support independent read and write accesses
     to extendable datasets.  Collective accesses to extendable
     datasets will be implemented in future releases.

   o Collective access to fixed dimension datasets.
     Collective access to a dataset can be specified in the transfer
     property list argument in H5Dread and H5Dwrite.  The current
     release supports collective access to fixed dimension datasets.
     Collective access to extendable datasets will be implemented in
     future releases.

   o HDF5 files are opened according to Communicator and INFO object.
     H5Dopen now records the communicator and INFO setup by H5Pset_mmpi
     and pass them to the corresponding MPIO open file calls for
     processing.

   o This release has been tested on IBM SP2, Intel Red and SGI Origin 2000
     systems.  It uses the ROMIO version of MPIO interface for parallel
     I/O supports.



%%%%1.0.0%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.0.0

3.  Changes from the Beta 1.0.0 Release to Release 1.0.0
====================================================================

* Added fill values for datasets.  For contiguous datasets fill value
  performance may be quite poor since the fill value is written to the 
  entire dataset when the dataset is created.  This will be remedied
  in a future version.  Chunked datasets using fill values do not
  incur any additional overhead. See H5Pset_fill_value().

* Multiple hdf5 files can be "mounted" on one another to create a
  larger virtual file. See H5Fmount().

* Object names can be removed or changed but objects are never
  actually removed from the file yet. See H5Gunlink() and H5Gmove().

* Added a tuning mechanism for B-trees to insure that sequential
  writes to chunked datasets use less overhead.  See H5Pset_btree_ratios().

* Various optimizations and bug fixes.



%%%%1.0.0 Beta%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.0.0 Beta

2. Changes from the Second Alpha 1.0.0 Release to the Beta 1.0.0 Release
=========================================================================

* Strided hyperslab selections in dataspaces now working.

* The compression API has been replaced with a more general filter
  API.  See doc/html/Filters.html for details.

* Alpha-quality 2d ragged arrays are implemented as a layer built on
  top of other hdf5 objects.  The API and storage format will almost
  certainly change.

* More debugging support including API tracing.  See Debugging.html.

* C and Fortran style 8-bit fixed-length character string types are
  supported with space or null padding or null termination and
  translations between them.

* Added function H5Fflush() to write all cached data immediately to
  the file.

* Datasets maintain a modification time which can be retrieved with
  H5Gstat().

* The h5ls tool can display much more information, including all the
  values of a dataset.



%%%%1.0.0 Alpha 2%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.0.0 Alpha 2

1.  Changes from the First Alpha 1.0.0 Release to 
     the Second Alpha 1.0.0 Release
=====================================================================

* Two of the packages have been renamed.  The data space API has been
  renamed from `H5P' to `H5S' and the property list (template) API has 
  been renamed from `H5C' to `H5P'.

* The new attribute API `H5A' has been added.  An attribute is a small 
  dataset which can be attached to some other object (for instance, a
  4x4 transformation matrix attached to a 3-dimensional dataset, or an 
  English abstract attached to a group).

* The error handling API `H5E' has been completed.  By default, when an
  API function returns failure an error stack is displayed on the
  standard error stream.  The H5Eset_auto() controls the automatic
  printing and H5E_BEGIN_TRY/H5E_END_TRY macros can temporarily
  disable the automatic error printing.

* Support for large files and datasets (>2GB) has been added.  There
  is an html document that describes how it works.  Some of the types
  for function arguments have changed to support this: all arguments
  pertaining to sizes of memory objects are `size_t' and all arguments 
  pertaining to file sizes are `hsize_t'.

* More data type conversions have been added although none of them are
  fine tuned for performance.  There are new converters from integer
  to integer and float to float, but not between integers and floating
  points.  A bug has been fixed in the converter between compound
  types.

* The numbered types have been removed from the API: int8, uint8,
  int16, uint16, int32, uint32, int64, uint64, float32, and float64.
  Use standard C types instead.  Similarly, the numbered types were
  removed from the H5T_NATIVE_* architecture; use unnumbered types
  which correspond to the standard C types like H5T_NATIVE_INT.

* More debugging support was added.  If tracing is enabled at
  configuration time (the default) and the HDF5_TRACE environment
  variable is set to a file descriptor then all API calls will emit
  the function name, argument names and values, and return value on
  that file number.  There is an html document that describes this.
  If appropriate debugging options are enabled at configuration time,
  some packages will display performance information on stderr.

* Data types can be stored in the file as independent objects and
  multiple datasets can share a data type.

* The raw data I/O stream has been implemented and the application can 
  control meta and raw data caches, so I/O performance should be
  improved from the first alpha release.

* Group and attribute query functions have been implemented so it is
  now possible to find out the contents of a file with no prior
  knowledge.

* External raw data storage allows datasets to be written by other
  applications or I/O libraries and described and accessed through
  HDF5.

* Hard and soft (symbolic) links are implemented which allow groups to 
  share objects. Dangling and recursive symbolic links are supported.

* User-defined data compression is implemented although we may
  generalize the interface to allow arbitrary user-defined filters
  which can be used for compression, checksums, encryption,
  performance monitoring, etc.  The publicly-available `deflate'
  method is predefined if the GNU libz.a can be found at configuration 
  time.

* The configuration scripts have been modified to make it easier to
  build debugging vs. production versions of the library.

* The library automatically checks that the application was compiled
  with the correct version of header files.


		    Parallel HDF5 Changes

* Parallel support for fixed dimension datasets with contiguous or
  chunked storages.  Also, support unlimited dimension datasets which
  must use chunk storage.  No parallel support for compressed datasets.

* Collective data transfer for H5Dread/H5Dwrite.  Collective access
  support for datasets with contiguous storage only, thus only fixed
  dimension datasets for now.

* H5Pset_mpi and H5Pget_mpi no longer have the access_mode
  argument.  It is taken over by the data-transfer property list
  of H5Dread/H5Dwrite.

* New functions H5Pset_xfer and H5Pget_xfer to handle the
  specification of independent or collective data transfer_mode
  in the dataset transfer properties list.  The properties
  list can be used to specify data transfer mode in the H5Dwrite
  and H5Dread function calls.

* Added parallel support for datasets with chunked storage layout.
  When a dataset is extend in a PHDF5 file, all processes that open
  the file must collectively call H5Dextend with identical new dimension
  sizes.


			LIST OF API FUNCTIONS

The following functions are implemented. Errors are returned if an
attempt is made to use some feature which is not implemented and
printing the error stack will show `not implemented yet'.

Library
   H5check		- check that lib version matches header version
   H5open		- initialize library (happens automatically)
   H5close		- shut down the library (happens automatically)
   H5dont_atexit	- don't call H5close on exit
   H5get_libversion	- retrieve library version info
   H5check_version	- check for specific library version

Property Lists
   H5Pclose		- release template resources
   H5Pcopy		- copy a template
   H5Pcreate		- create a new template
   H5Pget_chunk		- get chunked storage properties
   H5Pset_chunk		- set chunked storage properties
   H5Pget_class		- get template class
   H5Pget_istore_k	- get chunked storage properties
   H5Pset_istore_k	- set chunked storage properties
   H5Pget_layout	- get raw data layout class
   H5Pset_layout	- set raw data layout class
   H5Pget_sizes		- get address and size sizes
   H5Pset_sizes		- set address and size sizes
   H5Pget_sym_k		- get symbol table storage properties
   H5Pset_sym_k		- set symbol table storage properties
   H5Pget_userblock	- get user-block size
   H5Pset_userblock	- set user-block size
   H5Pget_version	- get file version numbers
   H5Pget_alignment	- get data alignment properties
   H5Pset_alignment	- set data alignment properties
   H5Pget_external_count- get count of external data files
   H5Pget_external	- get information about an external data file
   H5Pset_external	- add a new external data file to the list
   H5Pget_driver	- get low-level file driver class
   H5Pget_stdio		- get properties for stdio low-level driver
   H5Pset_stdio		- set properties for stdio low-level driver
   H5Pget_sec2		- get properties for sec2 low-level driver
   H5Pset_sec2		- set properties for sec2 low-level driver
   H5Pget_core		- get properties for core low-level driver
   H5Pset_core		- set properties for core low-level driver
   H5Pget_split		- get properties for split low-level driver
   H5Pset_split		- set properties for split low-level driver
   H5P_get_family	- get properties for family low-level driver
   H5P_set_family	- set properties for family low-level driver
   H5Pget_cache		- get meta- and raw-data caching properties
   H5Pset_cache		- set meta- and raw-data caching properties
   H5Pget_buffer	- get raw-data I/O pipe buffer properties
   H5Pset_buffer	- set raw-data I/O pipe buffer properties
   H5Pget_preserve	- get type conversion preservation properties
   H5Pset_preserve	- set type conversion preservation properties
   H5Pget_nfilters	- get number of raw data filters
   H5Pget_filter	- get raw data filter properties
   H5Pset_filter	- set raw data filter properties
   H5Pset_deflate	- set deflate compression filter properties
   H5Pget_mpi		- get MPI-IO properties
   H5Pset_mpi		- set MPI-IO properties
   H5Pget_xfer		- get data transfer properties
 + H5Pset_xfer		- set data transfer properties
 + H5Pset_preserve      - set dataset transfer property list status 
 + H5Pget_preserve      - get dataset transfer property list status
 + H5Pset_hyper_cache   - indicates whether to cache hyperslab blocks during I/O
 + H5Pget_hyper_cache   - returns information regarding the caching of 
                          hyperslab blocks during I/O
 + H5Pget_btree_ratios  - sets B-tree split ratios for a dataset 
                          transfer property list
 + H5Pset_btree_ratios  - gets B-tree split ratios for a dataset
                          transfer property list
 + H5Pset_vlen_mem_manager - sets the memory manager for variable-length 
                             datatype allocation
 + H5Pget_vlen_mem_manager - sets the memory manager for variable-length
                             datatype allocation

Datasets
   H5Dclose		- release dataset resources
   H5Dcreate		- create a new dataset
   H5Dget_space		- get data space
   H5Dget_type		- get data type
   H5Dget_create_plist	- get dataset creation properties
   H5Dopen		- open an existing dataset
   H5Dread		- read raw data
   H5Dwrite		- write raw data
   H5Dextend		- extend a dataset
 + H5Diterate           - iterate over all selected elements in a dataspace
 + H5Dget_storage_size  - return the amount of storage required for a dataset
 + H5Dvlen_reclaim      - reclaim VL datatype memory buffers

Attributes
   H5Acreate		- create a new attribute
   H5Aopen_name		- open an attribute by name
   H5Aopen_idx		- open an attribute by number
   H5Awrite		- write values into an attribute
   H5Aread		- read values from an attribute
   H5Aget_space		- get attribute data space
   H5Aget_type		- get attribute data type
   H5Aget_name		- get attribute name
   H5Anum_attrs		- return the number of attributes for an object
   H5Aiterate		- iterate over an object's attributes
   H5Adelete		- delete an attribute
   H5Aclose		- close an attribute

Errors
   H5Eclear		- clear the error stack
   H5Eprint		- print an error stack
   H5Eget_auto		- get automatic error reporting settings
   H5Eset_auto		- set automatic error reporting
   H5Ewalk		- iterate over the error stack
   H5Ewalk_cb		- the default error stack iterator function
   H5Eget_major		- get the message for the major error number
   H5Eget_minor		- get the message for the minor error number

Files
   H5Fclose		- close a file and release resources
   H5Fcreate		- create a new file
   H5Fget_create_plist	- get file creation property list
   H5Fget_access_plist	- get file access property list
   H5Fis_hdf5		- determine if a file is an hdf5 file
   H5Fopen		- open an existing file
   H5Freopen            - reopen an HDF5 file
   H5Fmount             - mount a file
   H5Funmount           - unmount a file
   H5Fflush             - flush all buffers associated with a file to disk

Groups
   H5Gclose		- close a group and release resources
   H5Gcreate    	- create a new group
   H5Gopen		- open an existing group
   H5Giterate   	- iterate over the contents of a group
   H5Gmove		- change the name of some object
   H5Glink		- create a hard or soft link to an object
   H5Gunlink    	- break the link between a name and an object
   H5Gget_objinfo	- get information about a group entry
   H5Gget_linkval	- get the value of a soft link
   H5Gget_comment	- get the comment string for an object
   H5Gset_comment	- set the comment string for an object

Dataspaces
   H5Screate	        - create a new data space
   H5Scopy		- copy a data space
   H5Sclose		- release data space
   H5Screate_simple	- create a new simple data space
   H5Sset_space		- set simple data space extents
   H5Sis_simple		- determine if data space is simple
   H5Sset_extent_simple	- set simple data space dimensionality and size
   H5Sget_simple_extent_npoints	- get number of points in simple extent
   H5Sget_simple_extent_ndims - get simple data space dimensionality
   H5Sget_simple_extent_dims - get simple data space size
   H5Sget_simple_extent_type - get type of simple extent
   H5Sset_extent_none	- reset extent to be empty
   H5Sextent_copy	- copy the extent from one data space to another
   H5Sget_select_npoints - get number of points selected for I/O
   H5Sselect_hyperslab	- set hyperslab dataspace selection
   H5Sselect_elements   - set element sequence dataspace selection
   H5Sselect_all	- select entire extent for I/O
   H5Sselect_none	- deselect all elements of extent
   H5Soffset_simple	- set selection offset
   H5Sselect_valid	- determine if selection is valid for extent
 + H5Sget_select_hyper_nblocks   - get number of hyperslab blocks
 + H5Sget_select_hyper_blocklist - get the list of hyperslab blocks 
                                   currently selected
 + H5Sget_select_elem_npoints    - get the number of element points 
                                   in the current selection
 + H5Sget_select_elem_pointlist  - get the list of element points 
                                   currently selected
 + H5Sget_select_bounds          - gets the bounding box containing 
                                   the current selection

Datatypes
   H5Tclose		- release data type resources
   H5Topen		- open a named data type
   H5Tcommit		- name a data type
   H5Tcommitted		- determine if a type is named
   H5Tcopy		- copy a data type
   H5Tcreate		- create a new data type
   H5Tequal		- compare two data types
   H5Tlock		- lock type to prevent changes
   H5Tfind		- find a data type conversion function
   H5Tconvert		- convert data from one type to another
   H5Tregister    	- register a conversion function
   H5Tunregister	- remove a conversion function
   H5Tget_overflow	- get function that handles overflow conv. cases
   H5Tset_overflow	- set function to handle overflow conversion cases
   H5Tget_class		- get data type class
   H5Tget_cset		- get character set
   H5Tget_ebias		- get exponent bias
   H5Tget_fields	- get floating point fields
   H5Tget_inpad		- get inter-field padding
   H5Tget_member_dims	- get struct member dimensions
   H5Tget_member_name	- get struct member name
   H5Tget_member_offset	- get struct member byte offset
   H5Tget_member_type	- get struct member type
   H5Tget_nmembers	- get number of struct members
   H5Tget_norm		- get floating point normalization
   H5Tget_offset	- get bit offset within type
   H5Tget_order		- get byte order
   H5Tget_pad		- get padding type
   H5Tget_precision	- get precision in bits
   H5Tget_sign		- get integer sign type
   H5Tget_size		- get size in bytes
   H5Tget_strpad	- get string padding
   H5Tinsert		- insert scalar struct member
   H5Tinsert_array	- insert array struct member
   H5Tpack		- pack struct members
   H5Tset_cset		- set character set
   H5Tset_ebias		- set exponent bias
   H5Tset_fields	- set floating point fields
   H5Tset_inpad		- set inter-field padding
   H5Tset_norm		- set floating point normalization
   H5Tset_offset	- set bit offset within type
   H5Tset_order		- set byte order
   H5Tset_pad		- set padding type
   H5Tset_precision	- set precision in bits
   H5Tset_sign		- set integer sign type
   H5Tset_size		- set size in bytes
   H5Tset_strpad	- set string padding
 + H5Tget_super         - return the base datatype from which a 
                          datatype is derived
 + H5Tvlen_create       - creates a new variable-length dataype
 + H5Tenum_create       - creates a new enumeration datatype
 + H5Tenum_insert       - inserts a new enumeration datatype member
 + H5Tenum_nameof       - returns the symbol name corresponding to a 
                          specified member of an enumeration datatype
 + H5Tvalueof           - return the value corresponding to a 
                          specified member of an enumeration datatype 
 + H5Tget_member_value  - return the value of an enumeration datatype member
 + H5Tset_tag           - tags an opaque datatype
 + H5Tget_tag           - gets the tag associated with an opaque datatype

 - H5Tregister_hard	- register specific type conversion function
 - H5Tregister_soft	- register general type conversion function

Filters
   H5Tregister		- register a conversion function 

Compression
   H5Zregister		- register new compression and uncompression 
                          functions for a method specified by a method number

Identifiers
 + H5Iget_type          - retrieve the type of an object

References
 + H5Rcreate            - creates a reference
 + H5Rdereference       - open the HDF5 object referenced
 + H5Rget_region        - retrieve a dataspace with the specified region selected
 + H5Rget_object_type   - retrieve the type of object that an 
                          object reference points to

Ragged Arrays (alpha)
   H5RAcreate		- create a new ragged array
   H5RAopen		- open an existing array
   H5RAclose		- close a ragged array
   H5RAwrite		- write to an array
   H5RAread		- read from an array