[Nexus-developers] FW: [Nexus] Bug in NX5getattrinfo ?

[Akeroyd, FA (Freddie)]

Hi,

I will get chance to work on the windows version over the next couple of
weeks as I need to implement it in an application; the major problem was
clashes of names when trying to build a combined HDF4/HDF5 application
that was not DLL based, but I believe NCSA have now fixed this.

With regard to the XML version, I though I had a problem with it
crashing out half way through running "napi_test-xml" on Fedora Core 2,
but it seems to work at the moment. My concern with the XML version is
the style of XML produced, in particular:

(1) Representation of attributes - the XML text is currently prefixed
with e.g. "NX_INT32: " if it is an integer, but nothing if it is a
string. For safety, strings should have some sort of prefix too
("NX_STRING:" though may look a bit ugly). My argument for a prefix is
that if somebody created a string attribute containing the text
"NX_INT32:1", the current API implementation could not distinguish this
string attribute from an integer attribute.

(2) Encoding of array dimensions - writing:

<name type="NX_FLOAT32[5,4]">

looks nice to the eye, but I worry that it is awkward for non-NeXus
programs to parse. If the purpose of the XML API is to also allow easy
exchange with other programs, we should look to using something more
along the lines of e.g. 

<name type="NX_FLOAT32" dimensions="5 4">

Regards,

Freddie

-----Original Message-----
From: nexus-developers-bounces at anl.gov
[mailto:nexus-developers-bounces at anl.gov] On Behalf Of Nick Maliszewskyj
Sent: 23 February 2005 20:04
To: Ray Osborn
Cc: nexus-developers at anl.gov
Subject: Re: [Nexus-developers] FW: [Nexus] Bug in NX5getattrinfo ?

Ray Osborn wrote:

>On 2005/02/22 15:25, "Peterson, Peter F." <petersonpf at ornl.gov> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Hey guys,
>>
>>This was posted on the main NeXus mailing list. It was solved some
time
>>ago, but the version with this fixed has not been released. When will
it
>>be?
>>
>>P^2 
>>    
>>
>
>I agree that this is something that we should fix quickly.  I spoke to
>Freddie about this last week, and he said that there were still some
>problems with the Windows version that need to be fixed.
Unfortunately,
>Freddie is out this week, but he can probably get this fixed fairly
quickly
>when he gets back. 
>
>He also said that he had some problems with the XML version.  If others
have
>the same problem, perhaps we should issue a release without the XML
(i.e.,
>the still unreleased v2.1) and then update (to 3.0 - did we agree this
>already at PSI?) as soon as we get the XML version fixed.
>
>Nick, can you develop a new release formalism quickly with some
information
>on tested systems?  If there is a reliable release tarball (i.e., not
>requiring the sh autogen step), send it to me and I will post a link on
the
>web page.
>
>Regards,
>Ray
>  
>
Sure. I can get on that in about a week's time.

BTW, I can only personally provide information on a few platforms: a
few variants of Linux (RedHat & relatives) and SGI. What platforms
do other developers use?

Nick

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o Center for Neutron Research
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