The Vis5d+ Release Notes

Vis5d+ 1.2.0

•  The NCAR modifications to vis5d 5.2 have been added.
• Support for stereo display mode (requires hardware support and proper configuration)
• Support for scene output to VRML format.
• Improved screen image dumping.
• Improved Isosurface rendering using decimated meshes (requires an external library mixkit)
• Many structures and arrays have been changed from statically to dynamically allocated.
• The beginnings of a new gtk+ based user interface have been added.  You must have gtk+1.2.9 or newer and configure with --enable-gtk to use this interface.
 

Vis5d+ 1.1

• The API (i.e. the libvis5d library) is now properly independent of the GUI.
• Better GrADS support in v5dimport (case-insensitive keywords, support for the PDEF statement, and template and byteswapped options). Removed an abitrary restriction on the minimum size of a file to be imported, which caused certain small GrADS header files to fail.
• v5dimport is now built using the same sources as the "import" command in Vis5d, in the src/ directory (the import/ directory is removed).
• Build maketopo and some other example utilities in the utils/ directory by default, although they are still not installed since you need to edit the source code for them to be useful. Thanks to Markus Neteler for the suggestion.
• v5dimport now looks for EARTH.topo in the installation prefix, or in the VIS5D_PATH/VIS5D_TOPO environment variables if one of those are defined.
• Synchronized with mainline tree as of April 2, 2001.
• You can now optionally specify the year with 4 digits, and the weekday is now correct. Also fixed year 2100 problem (not a leap year). Thanks to Jaakko Hyvätti for the patch.
• Added fortran-callable functions V5DUPDATE and V5DUPDATETIMES, similar to the C interface; thanks to Jaakko Hyvätti.
• Eliminate gcc compiler warnings; many code cleanups.
• Fixed non-working --with-memory configure option, thanks to Andrew Woolf.
• Fixed some problems compiling the Fortran utilities under Tru64 Unix, reported by Frederic Chagnon.
• Fixed possible crashing bug in vertical levels interpolation code.
• Possible bug fix when reading profiles from NetCDF files.
• Fixed a bug in v5dimport so that it properly handles the lowest level setting in the vertical coordinate system. For example, if a vcs had 4 levels 1012 1000 750 500 and a variable had lowlev=1 Nl=3, that variable should be defined on levels 1000 750 and 500, but v5dimport was ignoring the lowlev and using levels 1012 1000 and 750.

Vis5d+ 1.0.2

• Converted the manual to DocBook format, thanks to a contribution by Axel Reimann. From this, many other formats may be generated; HTML and PDF versions are included (in the doc/ subdirectory).
• Fixed bugs where the -wdpy option (to put the controls on a separate display) caused Vis5d to crash. Thanks to David Nunes for the bug report. (Fixes submitted to mainline tree also.)
• Fixed bug where options window could cause a crash, reported by Axel Reimann. (Submitted to mainline tree also.)
• Merged recent bug fixes from mainline tree. (Increased scripting limits and fixed missing data display in sounding tool.)

Vis5d+ 1.0.1

• Fixed stack-overflow bug in contour plotting, which was causing crashes under Linux. Thanks to Tairan Wang for his help. Linux/POSIX threads support now seems to work, although --disable-threads is still the default for now. (Bug fix submitted to mainline tree as well.)
• Fixed bug with map data files being installed into the wrong directory. Thanks to Michael M. Tung for the bug report. Users of older versions might want to delete the /usr/local/share/vis5d/ directory, as we now use /usr/local/share/vis5d+/.
• Fixed bug that caused Vis5d to crash if the 6x12 font is not available; thanks to Michael M. Tung for the report. (Fix submitted to mainline tree as well.)

Vis5d+ 1.0

• Renamed to Vis5d+, and set up project hosting on SourceForge.
• Fixed bug causing crashes when colorbar windows are hidden.
• Merged in recent crash fixes from mainline sources, thanks to Michael Schaferkotter and Bill Hibbard.
• Fixed another fp-exception bug on Alpha.
• Improved POSIX threads support (though crashes still occur at times).

Previous releases were called "Vis5d 5.2.xa", an "autoconfiscated" version of Vis5d 5.2.

Vis5d 5.2.5a

• Maximum memory used by Vis5d can now be set by the --with-memory=MB configure option, instead of editing vis5d.h.
• Merged in fixes from main tree to volume rendering box clipping.
• Fixed bug where -topo file wouldn't work if file was an absolute path. Thanks to Michael Boettinger for the bug report. (Same fix submitted and included in the main tree.)

Vis5d 5.2.4a

• Fixed bug causing floating-point exception on Alpha. (Same fix submitted and included in the main tree.)
• --with-mesa searches for libGL after libMesaGL, since newer versions of Mesa install without the "Mesa" prefix.

Vis5d 5.2.3a

• Fixed problem with NVidia drivers where Vis5D did not flush queued X events. (Merged in from main Vis5d 5.2 tree.)
• Use of multiple threads is disabled by default, as it seems to cause problems on some machines. Enable with 'configure --enable-threads'.

Vis5d 5.2.2a

• Adding missing userfuncs/, convert/, scripts/, and contrib/ subdirs, which had been accidentally omitted. Thanks to Paul J. Roebber for the bug report. (Due to a bug in automake-1.4.)

Vis5d 5.2.1a

• Merged in recent bug-fixes in main Vis5d 5.2 tree.

Vis5d 5.2a

• Removed large LAMPS.v5d and SCHL.v5d example files (you must download them separately, as before). Added small hole.v5d example file (from my electromagnetism calculations) so that users can immediately verify that Vis5D works and play with it a little.
• Used CPPFLAGS env. var. instead of less-standard INCLUDES to pass additional -I flags to the configure/build process (for header files in non-standard locations).

beta5

• Fixed bug in configure script; thanks to Jim Edwards for finding the problem.

beta4

• Path to data files now uses, in order of preference: the -path argument to Vis5d, the VIS5D_PATH environment variable, and the installation directory (/usr/local/share/vis5d by default). The API function vis5d_init_path overrides all of these. Thanks to Jim Edwards for the bug report and suggestions.

beta3

• With permission from the Vis5D authors, added an additional statement to the license making it clear that linking to the NetCDF, McIDAS, and the (included) LUI libraries is permitted, even though these libraries are under licenses not compatible with the (unmodified) GPL. The statement reads:

As a special exception to the terms of the GNU General Public License, you are permitted to link Vis5D with (and distribute the resulting source and executables) the LUI library (copyright by Stellar Computer Inc. and licensed for distribution with Vis5D), the McIDAS library, and/or the NetCDF library, where those libraries are governed by the terms of their own licenses.

beta2

• Added missing newline to end of api-config.h(.in) header file. Also tried harder to find MP_NPROCS on SGIs; hopefully it works on all systems now. Thanks to Jim Edwards for the bug report.

beta1

• Added autoconf/automake support to Vis5d 5.2, and many code cleanups. Installation is now accomplished via: ./configure && make && su -c "make install". See also the revised installation instructions in the README, as well as the revised developer notes in PORTING. The userfuncs/, contrib/, and convert/ directories still use the old Makefiles.
• The Vis5D API is now installed as shared and static libraries and header files. There are two libraries, libv5d and libvis5d. The former is a small library containing just the v5d file I/O routines (formerly v5d.o and binio.o), and the latter contains the rest of the API. Header files are installed under a vis5d/ subdirectory, so you should use e.g. #include . You can use --disable-shared or --disable-static to disable creation of the shared (.so) or static (.a) libraries. See the README for more information.
• Mesa is not included with Vis5d; configure looks for a version installed on your system. Depending on feedback, a later release may include a Mesa package again and build it if Mesa isn't found (this may cause some shared-library headaches, besides the package bloat, which is why I've put off doing this for now). Use configure --with-mesa to force the usage of Mesa even if your system has "real" OpenGL libraries. You can download Mesa from the Mesa homepage (see also README).
• The NetCDF library is now optional. When it is not found by configure, the associated features of Vis5d (irregular data support) are disabled. See also the --with-netcdf= and --without-netcdf configure options. Unrelated to this new version (even in 5.2), I have seen crashes under some circumsances when the NetCDF features are enabled--typically when clicking many buttons in quick succession. If you have problems, you may want to use --without-netcdf to disable NetCDF features.
• If you have newer McIDAS libraries than the (Irix) one included with Vis5d, do *not* put it in the src directory. Put it in the main Vis5d directory or specify its location with --with-mcidas=. configure assumes that src/libmcidas5.a is the older version of McIDAS (and disables MCIDAS_SIDECAR, for those of you familiar with the old makefiles).
• The data files EARTH.TOPO, OUTLSUPW, and OUTLUSAM are now included in the src/ subdirectory, and are automatically installed into prefix/share/vis5d (where prefix is the installation prefix and defaults to /usr/local. vis5d.h is set to look for these files in their *installed* location, which means it can't use them until you do 'make install'.
• The example files LAMPS.v5d and SCHL.v5d are now included.
• POSIX threads (formerly misnamed Linux threads in the code) may be detected and enabled by configure on any system. configure first looks for the SGI sproc fork variant, then POSIX threads, then SunOS threads. (Should POSIX threads be preferred over sproc?) See also the --disable-threads configure option to force single-tasking.
• configure should detect and use the Fortran compiler on more platforms than before, and the Fortran utilities now compile under GNU g77. You can force Fortran stuff to not be used by: configure --disable-fortran
• Bumped license version to GPL version 2 (was previously version 1). See the files COPYRIGHT and COPYING for the copyright and license info.
• Example Tcl scripts are now in the scripts/ subdirectory.