NCSA HDF Calling Interfaces and Utilities Table of Contents National Center for Supercomputing Applications March 1993 Table of Contents Introduction Overview xiii What Is HDF? xiii Differences Between HDF 3.1 and HDF 3.2 xiv Future Plans xvii Use of This Manual xvii Chapter 1 NCSA HDF Basics Chapter Overview 1.1 What Is Hierarchical Data Format? 1.1 Why Was HDF Created? 1.1 NCSA HDF Application Software 1.3 Getting Started with HDF 1.5 Examples 1.6 FORTRAN and C Language Issues 1.8 Installing HDF 1.11 Transferring HDF Files 1.11 How to Get HDF 1.11 Chapter 2 Storing Raster Images Chapter Overview 2.1 Header Files 2.1 Raster Image Sets 2.1 Reasons to Use Raster Image Sets 2.3 8-Bit Raster Image Sets 2.3 24-Bit Raster Image Sets 2.15 Sample Programs 2.24 Chapter 3 Storing Palettes Chapter Overview 3.1 HDF 8-Bit Palettes 3.1 Writing Palettes to a File 3.2 Reading Palettes from a File 3.4 Other Palette Routines 3.4 Chapter 4 Storing Rectangular Gridded Arrays of Scientific Data Chapter Overview 4.1 Scientific Datasets 4.1 Header File 4.4 Writing Scientific Datasets to a File 4.4 Reading Scientific Datasets from a File 4.22 Other SDS Routines 4.36 How SDS Routines Store and Convert Scientific Data 4.37 Backward Compatibility 4.39 Sample Programs 4.40 Chapter 5 Annotating Data Objects and Files Chapter Overview 5.1 Annotation Tags 5.1 The Annotation Interface 5.4 Writing Annotations for HDF Objects 5.5 Reading Annotations for HDF Objects 5.7 Listing All Labels for a Given Tag 5.10 Writing Annotations for HDF Files 5.13 Reading Annotations for HDF Files 5.16 Getting Annotation Information from a File 5.20 Chapter 6 NCSA HDF Command Line Utilities Chapter Overview 7.1 Introduction 7.1 hdfls: Listing Basic Information about an HDF File 7.2 hdfed: Editing an HDF File 7.3 fptohdf: Converting Floating-Point Data to SDS and/or RIS8 7.12 Utilities for Working with Raster Image Sets 7.16 hdfpack: Compacting an HDF file 7.22 Appendix A NCSA HDF Tags Overview A.1 Tag Types and Descriptions A.1 Appendix B Routine Lists Raster Image Routines E.1 Palette Routines E.2 Annotations Routines E.3 Scientific Dataset Routines E.3 Utility Routines E.5