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                            Newsletter #109
                           November 13, 2009 

CONTENTS
 . Release of HDF5 1.8.4 and HDF5 1.6.10
 . Windows Compiler Support
 . HDF-EOS Web Site Changes
 . MATLAB Examples for HDF5 1.8

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Release of HDF5 1.8.4 and HDF5 1.6.10
=====================================

The HDF5 1.8.4 and HDF5 1.6.10 releases are now available and can
be accessed from the HDF5 Home Page at:

  http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/

See the Downloads page for obtaining HDF5 (and other software):

  http://www.hdfgroup.org/downloads/

Both of these releases are minor releases with a few new features
and changes. Important changes with these releases include:

 HDF5 1.8.4:
    
  There were many improvements to the library and tools, including:

    - The configure and make were modified to preserve the CFLAGS environment
      variable provided by the user.

    - The h5dump utility can display data pointed to by region references
      (-R flag).

    - The h5diff utility has an improved way of handling number comparison,
      including infinity.
   
    - The library no longer modifies a file opened for R/W (by re-writing the
      superblock) when no changes were made to the file.

    - Several issues related to variable-length datatypes were resolved.


 HDF5 1.6.10:

    HDF5 1.6.10 is the LAST RELEASE of HDF5 1.6.


Please refer to the Release Notes in each release for a detailed list
of what changed:

 HDF5 1.8.4:
   http://www.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/current/src/hdf5-1.8.4-RELEASE.txt

 HDF5 1.6.10: 
   http://www.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/current16/src/hdf5-1.6.10-RELEASE.txt


Windows Compiler Support
========================

Please be advised that HDF5 1.8.4 is the last release of HDF5
that will support Intel Fortran 9.1 on Windows.

In addition, Visual Studio 2005 support will be dropped after
Visual Studio 2010 is released (scheduled for Spring 2010).  At
that time, Visual Studio 2008 and Intel Fortran 11 will become
the standard HDF5 project configuration on Windows.



HDF-EOS Web Site Changes
========================

Many changes have been made to the HDF-EOS Tools and Information
Center web site at http://hdfeos.org/ to help HDF and HDF-EOS users
handle NASA HDF data.

A new section entitled "EXAMPLES" was added to the web site, which
includes example code for accessing HDF-EOS Grid and Swath files using
C, Fortran, IDL and Matlab, as well as examples of using tools to access
HDF-EOS and HDF files.

The libraries and tools under "SOFTWARE" have all been re-evaluated and
updated where possible, and many new libraries and tools have been added.

Lastly, a web forum was added to the web site to enable users to
share knowledge related to handling NASA HDF and HDF-EOS data.


MATLAB Examples for HDF5 1.8
============================

We are pleased to announce that The MathWorks has provided HDF5 1.8
examples for using HDF5 with MATLAB (in addition to HDF5 1.6 examples).
Both the 1.8 and 1.6 examples can be accessed from here:

   http://www.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/examples/examples-by-api/

If you have any questions regarding these examples, let us know.

Many thanks to The MathWorks for their support of the HDF technologies.
 

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For questions regarding these or other HDF issues, contact:

   help@hdfgroup.org