Russ Rew: Re: Various netcdf matters

Oops, forgot to CC: support-netcdf ...

------- Forwarded Message

Date:    Fri, 22 Nov 1996 14:39:44 -0700
From:    Russ Rew <address@hidden>
To:      Harvey DAVIES <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: Various netcdf matters 

> Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 13:28:06 +1100 (EST)
> From: Harvey DAVIES <address@hidden>
> Organization:  CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences
> To: Russ Rew <address@hidden>
> Cc: "Glenn P. Davis" <address@hidden>, address@hidden,
>         address@hidden, address@hidden
> Subject: Various netcdf matters

Hi Harvey,

> I was not aware of version 3.2a.  Was this mentioned in netcdfgroup?
> How does it differ from 3.1a?  

It's just a test version that hasn't been released yet.

> I also noticed netcdf-3.1a_hdf.tar.Z & in fact downloaded it out of
> curiosity.  What is it?  There is something wrong with this tar file in
> that tar creates directories as ordinary files!

It's Glenn's work on providing the implementation of the netcdf-3
interface for the HDF format, so that the HDF people would continue to
support the latest netcdf interface.  We're talking to them about
sharing a format for netCDF-4 as well.

I couldn't reproduce the problem with untarring the file; it seemed to
uncompress and untar fine.

> I noticed that you have a mirror site in Europe.  I wondered if there would
> be any point in our becoming such a mirror site.  But on second thought,
> the speed of the link from here to there is really pretty good, so perhaps
> there is really no need.  But if you think this would be desirable, could you
> indicate what would be involved (how much disk space, etc.)?

I only requested a volunteer for a mirror site in Europe because we had
several complaints from European users not being able to download our
software or documentation because of bad connectivity.  So far we
haven't had any such complaints from Australia, though we did have one
complaint from Japan.

> I have done a lot of work on the new version of fan. It uses netcdf 3, but is
> designed to also support other types of file - only text implemented at
> moment.  The fact that ncrob can now read text means that it has the
> functionality of text2nc (as well as nc2text which it already had). In fact I
> am thinking of renaming ncrob to something like 'fanrob' or 'fanut' (ut for
> utility), since it no longer is just a netcdf utility.  I have not done any
> timing tests yet, but am hoping for some dramatic speedups.

Great, sounds useful.

> I will probably want to install netcdf, udunits & fan on an HP Convex Exemplar
> is not listed in the FAQ answer to "What does netCDF run on?".  Are you aware
> of anyone installing your software on this box?  I am hoping to try
> parallelizing ncrob.

Nope, sorry, we don't know anything about that platform.

- --Russ


------- End of Forwarded Message