HDF File Format

['Guy Jennings' <guy_jennings@qmgate.anl.gov>]

                      Subject:                              Time:  2:10 PM
  OFFICE MEMO         HDF File Format                       Date:  5/17/94
I'd like to add my vote for using HDF as a standard file format.

We've been using it for about a year and have found it satisfactory.
We also use the Spyglass Plot, Transform and Dicer programs for 
visualisation - 'Plot' is weak, but the other two are good.

I've added a C++ wrapper to implement object persistence to save
and restore objects to HDF files.

I've got a couple of grumbles with the NCSA libraries, however:

1:  You can't store an SDS with no data points.

2:  The calling interface is a bit bizarre, you frequently need to
refer to files via path names rather than some kind of handle.  The
library seems to spend a lot of it's time discovering that you are,
in fact, writing to the same file that you just wrote to.

I don't think that either of these is a major problem, however.

Guy Jennings,

BESSRC CAT.  (pronounced  'berserk cat')