Hi,
First a reminder: administrative requests to be added to or deleted from
this mailing list should be sent to netcdfgroup-adm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, *not*
netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Question 4 in the NetCDF Frequently Asked Questions list is:
4: When will the next version be available? What changes are included?
The previous answer was that we would have the next version available in
January 1993, but January is over and the new version is not quite ready
yet. We hope to have a beta release available in another week or two. I'm
just calling it "the new version" because we're still discussing whether to
call it netCDF 2.3 or netCDF 3.0. We are making no incompatible changes in
the interface, but the additions of some new functions may justify a new
release number.
Here's the updated answer to Question 4 in the FAQ list (pub/netcdf/FAQ on
unidata.ucar.edu):
A: We hope to make the next version available in February 1993. It contains
bug fixes, portability enhancements, performance enhancements, and new
capabilities.
We implemented some new optimizations for the library that result in
significant speedups for accessing cross-sections involving
non-contiguous data.
New capabilities include some additional interfaces that provide a more
general form of hyperslab access. This supports sub-sampling along
specified dimensions and a mapping between the points of the hyperslab
and the memory locations of the corresponding values. In a generalized
hyperslab, an index mapping vector is used to define the mapping between
points in the generalized hyperslab and the memory locations of the
corresponding values, so data values that are written or read need no
longer be contiguous in memory.
There are also some new interfaces that can be used to write, read, and
inquire about records, where a record may contain multiple variables of
different types and shapes. Where before you had to access a record's
worth of data using multiple calls, now you will be able to use a single
call.
The ncdump utility supports several new command-line options including
the ability to specify for which variables data values will be output,
to provide brief annotations in the form of CDL comments to identify
data values for large multidimensional variables, or to provide full
annotations in the form of trailing CDL comments for every data value.
The new release also includes a prototype implementation of a C++
interface for the netCDF data access library. It provides all the
functionality of the C interface, improves type safety by eliminating
all use of void* pointers, and is somewhat simpler to use than the C
interface. With the C++ interface no IDs are needed for netCDF
components, there is no need to specify types when creating attributes,
and less indirection is required for dealing with dimensions. However,
since this is a prototype interface and implementation, it may be
changed before a supported version is released.
________________________________________________________________________
Russ Rew Unidata Program Center
russ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx UCAR, PO Box 3000
Boulder, CO 80307-3000
