CDF Changes Log, CDF V2.4 V2.0.0 11-Feb-91 Initial release of CDF V2.0. V2.1.0 7-Jun-91 Initial release of CDF V2.1. V2.2.0 20-May-92 Initial release of CDF V2.2. V2.3.0 1-Oct-92 Initial release of CDF V2.3. V2.4.0 26-Jan-94 Initial release of CDF V2.4. New features include... - The distribution has been ported to the DEC Alpha (OSF/1 & OpenVMS) and the Sun (Solaris). - An open CDF may now be configured into zMode. This causes the rVariables of a CDF to appear as zVariables (already existing zVariables are not affected). This mode is provided to assist in the transition to zVariables. The toolkit programs have also been modified to allow CDFs to be placed into zMode. - Support for the Internal Interface (CDFlib) has been added to the IDL interface provided with the CDF distribution (the CDF/IDL interface). IDL has also added this support to their CDF interface (in a limited way). The EPOCH manipulation routines have also been added to the IDL interface provided with the CDF distribution. In addition, an online help file for the IDL interface provided with the CDF distribution is available. - It is now possible to request a decoding other than that of the host computer when attribute entry and variable values are passed out by the CDF library. For example, VAX encoded values may be requested while running on a Sun computer. This has been provided to assist in the development of client/server systems where the server running on one type of computer reads data values out of a CDF and then transfers thoses values to a client running on a different kind of computer. The server would request the host decoding of the client computer before reading the values. No conversions would be necessary by the client. - A new toolkit program, CDFedit, has been added to the distribution. CDFedit allows virtually all of the contents of a CDF to be displayed and/or modified. - When using the Internal Interface in a C/Fortran application, the need to select the current CDF in every call to CDFlib/CDF_lib has been eliminated. The current CDF is maintained by the CDF library from one call to the next of CDFlib/CDF_lib. In CDF's IDL interface, however, selecting the current CDF is still required in each call to the Internal Interface. - Support for the Internal Interface from Fortran applications (CDF_lib) on the IBM PC has been added. Its use requires an additional include file to be included by an application. - The ability to read/write a full-physical record from/to up to all of the rVariables/zVariables with a single call to the CDF library has been added to the distribution. This mode of access is referred to as multiple variable access. - An operation has been added to the Internal Interface which allows the current rEntry/zEntry numbers to be selected by rVariable/zVariable name. - An option has been added to the CDF library which allows an application program to specify the number of cache buffers to be used with an open file. The CDF User's Guide describes the caching scheme used by the CDF library. - The ability to rename a single-file CDF with a different (or no) extension has been added. The CDF library will attempt to open a CDF by using the specification exactly as given as well as by appending `.cdf' automatically. - An operation has been added to the Internal Interface which allows the indexing statistics of a variable in a single-file CDF to be inquired. - New EPOCH manipulation routines have been added which allow EPOCH character strings to be parsed and EPOCH values to be encoded. - The default qualifiers for the toolkit programs can now be configured when the CDF distribution is built and installed. These defaults can be overridden when a toolkit program is executed by specifying the desired qualifiers on the command line. The `readme' file for each particular type of operating systems (VMS, UNIX, or MS-DOS) explains how to configure the CDF distribution. - An option has been added to the CDF library which allows the floating-point value -0.0 to be converted to 0.0 automatically when detected. A value of -0.0 is illegal on VAXes and will cause a program attempting to use it to crash. This option can be requested by an application (via the Internal Interface) or with a qualifier when running a toolkit program. - CDFlist has been modified to allow variable values to be displayed in either a vertical or horizontal format (when in zMode). The efficiency of CDFlist has also been improved (by using the MONOTON attribute or by the user specifying the monotonicity of the variables). - A qualifier has been added to the CDFlist and CDFwalk toolkit programs which allows the specification of the initial settings on the various menus available when running these programs. - A new qualifier has been added to the CDFskeleton toolkit program which allows FILLVAL attribute entry values to be used to specify the pad values for the corresponding variables. - A qualifier has been added to the CDFstats toolkit program which requests that the corresponding MONOTON attribute entries be updated based on the monotonicities detected for the variables. - A qualifier has been added to the CDFcompare toolkit program which requests that the locations (record/indices) of differences detected between two variables be displayed. - A qualifier has been added to the CDFinquire toolkit program which allows the specification of the variables for which values should be displayed. - The capability to use the FORMAT attribute has been added to all of the toolkit programs. - A qualifier has been added to most of the toolkit programs which allows a user to select which types of status codes from the CDF library should be reported: errors, warnings, and/or informationals. - The CDFbrowse toolkit program has been removed from the distribution. Its functionality remains by running CDFedit in a browsing mode. The alias/symbol CDFbrowse still exists in the `definitions' file on UNIX/VMS systems but now executes CDFedit in a browse-only mode. V2.4.1 9-Feb-94 The real DEC Alpha/OpenVMS port. Both D_FLOAT and G_FLOAT double-precision floating-point encodings/decodings are supported. Simplified build/test/install procedures for VMS systems. V2.4.1a 10-Feb-94 Fix to CDFlist involving the creation of CDFs while in ZMODE. V2.4.1b 25-Feb-94 Spelling lesson (existance => existence). Limited lines in Fortran source code files to 72 columns or less (some comment lines had been longer). Added `CDF_lib' to visible symbols for shareable CDF library. V2.4.2 2-Mar-94 Fixed dimensionality checking in `CDF_create' of Standard Interface for Fortran applications. V2.4.3 11-Mar-94 Added ability to override default qualifier style of command line arguments for toolkit programs. Qualifier styles are slash (VMS) and hyphen (UNIX/DOS). Added the OpenVMS encodings to the error checking when reopening a CDF for write access. V2.4.4 11-Apr-94 Modified CDFlist to use hyper writes when creating a new CDF. Added capability to use different C compilers (eg. Gnu C) on UNIX machines. Default memory model for CDF libraries distributed for the IBM PC is now the huge memory model. V2.4.5 5-Jul-94 Increased maximum size for a file name. Modified how the existance of a file over NSI/DECnet is determined on VMS systems. Modifications to handle CD-ROM drivers on various VMS systems. V2.4.6 12-Jul-94 Modified decoding routines to handle the problem with decoding "-2147483648" on a DEC Alpha running OpenVMS. V2.4.7 29-Aug-94 Added missing Internal Interface items (for Fortran and IDL). V2.4.7a 31-Aug-94 EXIT_SUCCESS_/FAILURE_. V2.4.8 3-Oct-94 gEntry/rEntry distinction in IDL Standard Interface. V2.4.9 28-Oct-94 Allocate sufficient space in FindCDF for pathnames. V2.4.10 10-Nov-94 Fixed for Fortran Interface. V2.4.11 22-Nov-94 Fixed when in zMode. V2.4.12 9-Dec-94 -2147483648 -> 0x8000000, `long' -> `Int32', new OSF/1 release, etc.