[Nexus] Release of Version 2.0.0 (including HDF5 support)

[Ray Osborn]

Version 2.0.0 of the NeXus API has just been formally released.  Please
visit the web pages at <http://www.neutron.anl.gov/nexus/> for further
details.

This is the first update of the major version number since the API was first
released, but we felt this was justified since it is the first version to
include support for HDF5.  The latest version allows the reading and writing
of both HDF4 and HDF5 files without any changes to the API (provided both
libraries are installed on your system).  Programs for reading NeXus files
will only need relinking, not rewriting. Programs to write NeXus files
choose which version of HDF when opening the file, but again do not require
any other modification except for minor changes in the way data compression
is handled.  

I would like to thank Mark Koennecke and Uwe Filges for producing the HDF5
version, and making the transition so transparent to the end user.  It is an
impressive achievement given that HDF4 and HDF5 are substantially different.

The only other new feature of this release is the addition of two new
utilities.  NXtoXML converts an existing NeXus file to an ASCII XML file in
a format identical to the NeXus meta-DTD format announced earlier.  NXtoDTD
does the same conversion but does not include any data.  It will therefore
produce the skeleton of a meta-DTD file, which will only need annotating.
We encourage people who have existing NeXus files to produce such files as a
way of documenting existing format definitions.
 
This version has been tested on DEC Alpha Unix, Red Hat Linux, Windows, and
Mac OS X using both HDF4 and HDF5 libraries, and DEC Alpha/VMS using the
HDF4 library. 

Although we have done our best to test this version before its release, we
would appreciate immediate feedback if you encounter any problems.

-- 
Dr Ray Osborn                Tel: +1 (630) 252-9011
Materials Science Division   Fax: +1 (630) 252-7777
Argonne National Laboratory  E-mail: ROsborn at anl.gov
Argonne, IL 60439-4845