graphics/opendx and dropping science/hdf

[Mike Folk]

I completely forgot:  Ireneusz Szczesniak has done an open dx 
implementation called "dxhdf5", and has some nice documentation and other 
materials at http://www-beams.colorado.edu/dxhdf5/.   We need to be working 
with her.

Mike

------------------------------------
(Thanks for cc'ing me Quincey.)
Just a couple other comments about open dx:

The CACTUS project has been using open dx with hdf5 for several years.  I 
strongly suspect there are others, but don't know specifics.  As far as I 
know, the CACTUS folks haven't documented their work (I asked them a few 
times, but that was a couple of years ago), so I don't know exactly how 
they organize the data.

Open dx and hdf5 are a natural combination, and it's a pity we haven't 
married them in some formal way, and we'd love to work with you if you move 
in that direction.

Mike

At 09:27 AM 4/8/2004, Quincey Koziol wrote:
>Hi Mikhail,
>
> > I intend to drop the science/hdf port. It was obsoleted by hdf5 long ago
> > (was it?), it breaks on some some 64bit platforms, it conflicts with
> > math/netcdf.
> >
> > All the technical issues are, probably, fixable, but the obsoleteness
> > makes them not worth the effort. Or so it seems.
> >
> > The only port relying on science/hdf is graphics/opendx and only if
> > WITH_HDF is defined. Unfortunately, opendx does not (yet?) support hdf5.
> >
> > So...
> >       . Does hdf5 really obsolete hdf4?
>     No, they are different file formats & libraries, etc.
>
> >       . Does hdf support add much value to opendx at all,
> >         or can we just remove it?
>     I don't know.
>
> >       . If not, should I (or some other helping hand) try to patch
> >         opendx to use hdf5?
>     It would certainly be nice if opendx supported hdf5.
>
> >               or
> >       . bring the old hdf4 into the 21st century (fixing the types,
> >         depending on math/netcdf instead of building its own)?
>     It shouldn't be _too_ hard to fix the type information in hdf4 (I can 
> help
>you with that, if you'd like), but it would be _very_ hard to depend on
>math/netcdf instead of its own.
>
>     Quincey
>
> >
> > Thanks for any ideas,
> >
> >       -mi
> >

--
Mike Folk, Scientific Data Tech (HDF)   http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu
NCSA/U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign          217-244-0647 voice
605 E. Springfield Ave., Champaign IL 61820     217-244-1987 fax