H4H5tools version 1.2 released in March 2005

1. Introduction

This document describes the h4h5tools and contains information on 
the platforms tested and limitations. H4h5tools include three products, 
H4toH5 conversion library, H4toH5 conversion utility and H5toH4 
conversion utility.

Both H4toH5 conversion library and H4toH5 conversion utility follow HDF4 to 
HDF5 mapping document.  This document can be found at:
http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc/ADGuide/H4toH5Mapping.pdf

The H4toH5 conversion library user's guide and reference manual can be 
found at:
http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/h4toh5/h4toh5lib_UG.pdf
http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/h4toh5/h4toh5lib_RM.pdf

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to:
hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu


2. Platforms Tested

H4H5tools have been tested on all the platforms listed in INSTALL file
in the top directory.

3. Prerequisites

1) HDF (version 4.2r1) and supported libraries 
2) HDF5 (version 1.6.4) library
3) The absolute path of HDF5 library is in LD_LIBRARY_PATH

4. Install  

Unix install: see install.txt
Windows XP install: see install_windows.txt 
(see h4h5proj.zip in the windows directory )

5. New features
 5.1 windows development
   1) We use environment variables to represent HDF4 libraries 
     and external libraries. In this way, users can change their own HDF4 and external
     libraries easily.
   2) Only DLL versions of szip and zlib libraries are used.
   Please read the details at INSTALLh425_Windows.txt inside h4h5proj.zip.
 5.2 Handling of external libraries
   Since zlib and jpeg libraries are required for HDF4, so to use H4toH5
   library, zlib and jpeg are required. szip can be optional. To avoid using
   szip, users must build HDF4 and HDF5 with szip disabled, H4toH5 library
   then should be built with the new HDF4 and HDF5. 
 

6. Limitations and known problems

1) In this release, all HDF5 property list parameters are set as H5P_DEFAULT. 

2) On windows XP platform, 
   a) We are only providing h4toh5 library based on two combinations of HDF4 and HDF5 in the binary release.
     Static library: use only HDF4 and HDF5 release version of static libraries.
     DLL: use debug version of HDF4 DLL and release version of HDF5 DLL.
     When an application wants to use H4toh5 DLL, it must connect with **DEBUG** DLLs of HDF4 libraries for
     both release and debug mode of the application. 
     The image routines will fail when using other combinations of HDF4 and HDF5 DLL libraries to build the H4toh5 library.
   b) We provide the project file on how to build h4toh5 library based on other combinations of HDF4 and HDF5 in the 
      source release. Users who want to use these two libraries are warned that it may be failed.

   c) For DLL versions of h4toh5 and h5toh4 utilities, both tests failed. So
in this release, we won't provide DLL versions of utilities for windows.


3)  On HPUX two h5toh4 tests report failure while comparing names of the 
    CDF0.0 Vgroups; this is due to a known bug in HDF4: name string is 
    truncated when Vgroup is created. 









