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                            Newsletter #146 
                           November 13, 2015 

CONTENTS
. Release of HDF5-1.8.16
. Software Highlights
. Dr. Michael Folk to Step Down as President and Executive
    Director of The HDF Group

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

Release of HDF5-1.8.16
======================

The HDF5-1.8.16 release is now available. It can be obtained from The HDF
Group Downloads page:

   https://www.hdfgroup.org/downloads/

It can also be obtained directly from the HDF5 download page:

   https://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/release/obtain5.html

HDF5-1.8.16 is a minor release with a few new features and changes.
Important changes to be aware of are:
   
 o The CMake files have been updated to build both static and shared
   libraries, with tools only built statically.

 o The shared object version numbers for wrapper libraries have been
   decoupled from the shared object version number for the HDF5 library.
   These version numbers will be maintained on an individual basis according
   to any interface changes specific to the corresponding wrapper libraries.

 o The H5is_library_threadsafe() function was added for indicating if the
   library was built with threadsafety enabled.
 
 o C++ API Changes: 
  
   - Static global constant objects were changed to constant references to
     dynamically allocated objects. This change was necessary because memory
     leaks occurred as a result of the global constants not getting properly
     deleted prior to termination of the C library. This was the change that
     prompted the above mentioned modification of the shared object version
     numbers for wrapper libraries. 

   - The class H5::ObjCreatPropList was added for the object creation 
     property list class.

   - New wrappers were added for the C functions H5P[s/g]et_attr_phase_change
     and H5P[s/g]et_attr_creation_order. 

 o Windows support was added for Visual Studio 2015 with Intel Fortran 16.
 
This release contains many other changes that are not listed here. Please be
sure to read the Release Notes for a comprehensive list of new features and
changes:

   https://www.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/current/src/hdf5-1.8.16-RELEASE.txt

Changes that affect maintainers of HDF5-dependent applications are listed on
the Software Changes from Release to Release page:

   https://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/ADGuide/Changes.html


Future Changes to Supported Compilers and Platforms
---------------------------------------------------

After this release, we will be moving our CMake standard to 3.4 to make use
of features that will improve our build environment on more platforms.

Our Windows standard will remain Windows 7 with Visual Studio 2013 and
Intel Fortran 15. After the release of HDF5-1.8.17 in May 2016 we plan to
move the standard to Windows 10 with Visual Studio 2015 and Intel Fortran 16.

We will continue to test Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio 2013 and Intel
Fortran 15 on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

We plan to drop Mac OS X 10.8 after this release.


Software Highlights
===================

We are developing several new HDF applications and welcome your input
regarding them: 

   HDF Compass: A new viewer for HDF5 and related formats.
     See: https://www.hdfgroup.org/projects/compass/

   HDF Server:  A Python-based web service that can be used to send
     and receive HDF5 data using an HTTP-based REST interface.
     See: https://www.hdfgroup.org/projects/hdfserver/

   Product Designer:  A tool for designing HDF products and a framework for
     sharing and re-using those designs across work groups and with others while
     improving interoperability and compliance with community conventions.
     See: https://wiki.earthdata.nasa.gov/display/HPD/HDF+Product+Designer

   PyHexad: A Python-based Excel add-in for HDF5 that can be used to
     read or write data in HDF5 files from Microsoft Excel on Windows. 
     See: https://www.hdfgroup.org/projects/pyhexad/

Let us know what you think!


Dr. Michael Folk to Step Down as President and Executive Director
of The HDF Group
=================================================================

After 27 years' stewardship of HDF, the last ten as President and Executive
Director of The HDF Group, Mike Folk has announced that he will retire. 
Mike will continue to provide his leadership to The HDF Group during this
transition. See the Press Release on The HDF Group news page for
complete details:

   https://www.hdfgroup.org/news/index.html#mfolk 


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For questions regarding these or other HDF issues, contact:

   help@hdfgroup.org