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> From: address@hidden (Roberta Young) > To: address@hidden > Subject: feed back on netcdf documentation, can you pass this along ? Hi Roberta, > i am starting to use a new numerical ocean model that does > all it's i/o in the form of netcdf files. i have built > netcdf for our system several times so i know where the > man pages are and how to make sure i can read them. > > it would be a very great help if there were a man page > for each of the functions and subroutine calls to help > the new user sort out that is happening with the netcdf > calls. reading the netcdf user's guid gives far too > much information at once to absorb reding it front > to end. and finding what ech funtion and call means > feels like a random walk through the table of contents. > a more direct access form via man pages would be > easier to use for the novice netcdf user.... > > i know that for ncargks graphics, i tend to use the man > pages released with that package heavily when i am following > someone else's code. The current netCDF distribution includes four man page files: man1/ncgen.1 the ncgen program man1/ncdump.1 the ncdump program man3/netcdf.3 the C library man3/netcdf.3f the Fortran library The latter two man pages provide reference documentation for all 34 functions in the C interface and 40 routines in the Fortran interface. We did not provide man page documentation for the C++ interface, because the -man troff macros are not well-suited to documenting C++ classes and methods, but we do provide a C++ document in two other forms with the distribution. I think providing a separate man page for each function in the C and Fortran interfaces would be inconsistent with conventions for other Unix library packages, e.g. the 19 string operation functions are all documented in one man page: string.3. The netCDF-3 version we are about to announce and release supports all the old netCDF-2 interfaces for backwards compatibility, but also documents new netCDF interfaces for C and Fortran, with 134 new C functions and 113 new Fortran functions. We still document these in the same four man page files as we did with netCDF-2. I think you'll agree that with netCDF-3, one man page per function would be impractical. But thanks for the feedback. Perhaps the appendices summarizing the interfaces in the new User's Guides for C and Fortran available from ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/guidec-3.ps.Z ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/guidef-3.ps.Z will suffice for providing short summaries of the available functions. --Russ _____________________________________________________________________ Russ Rew UCAR Unidata Program address@hidden http://www.unidata.ucar.edu