Re: 970214: documentation for NetCDF 3.3

>To: address@hidden
>From: "Peter Q. Olsson" <address@hidden>
>Subject: documentation for NetCDF 3.3
>Organization: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks
>Keywords: 199702141827.LAA15755

Hi Dr. Olsson,

> Does a document exist which updates the NetCDF Users Guide, Ver 2.4? I
> did not notice anything in the distribution other than man pages for
> ncdump and ncgen.  An examination of the source for ncdump however
> reveals a number of functions with names structured: nc_xxxxx which seem
> to parallel and/or replace older version2 functions.  What gives?

The distribution you have (which is a pre-beta distribution for version
3, since version 2.4.3 is the only released version) has man pages for
the C interface in src/libsrc/netcdf.3.  A more useful document to
understand the changes between version 2 and version 3 is the Prerelease
Notes, available as

    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/prerelease.html

This document is referenced in the "What's New with NetCDF?" page at 

    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/whatsnew.html

which is also referenced from the netCDF home page.  Looking at the
entries in this last document is the best way to keep up with netCDF
developments.

The netCDF User's Guide, Version 2.4, is being replaced by two new
version 3 documents: the NetCDF User's Guide for C and the NetCDF User's
Guide for FORTRAN.  These are each language-specific documents that
describe the new version 3 interfaces and include transition guides from
version 2 to version 3 interface.  Eventually there should be similar
language-specific guides for the other language interfaces, but the
first release of version 3 will not be delayed for new C++ or perl
documentation, because these interfaces have not changed.

Currently these manuals are in draft form, but they are close to being
complete, and will be included in the first general release of netCDF-3.
We still have to redo the indices and table of contents.  It would be
possible to generate versions of the new manuals now, but they would
have only crude indexes and tables of contents.

The current ncdump sources should work without modification for
netCDF-3, since the version-2 interfaces are supported for backwards
compatibility.  However, in order to demonstrate the adequacy of the new
interfaces for writing generic utilities and browsers and assess the
difficulty of converting to the new interfaces, I converted ncdump to
use the new netCDF-3 C interface.

Please let us know if you have any more questions about the new version
that are not answered in the prerelease notes.  If you're interested in
future plans for netCDF, a paper

    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/ams97.html

is available describing current netCDF status and plans.  

--Russ

_____________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu