XDFV - X (Network Common | Hierarchical 4 | Hierarchical 5) Data Format Viewer


DESCRIPTION
------------
A slick NetCDF/HDF4/HDF5 contents viewer with developers in mind.


INSTALLATION
------------
The source maybe obtained by git cloning from github.com with:

git clone https://github.com/gmcgarragh/xdfv.git

The main code is C/C++ and is dependent on the C++ standard library and the
following external libraries:

* Qt4 or Qt5
* NetCDF
* HDF4
* HDF5

The build system requires GNU Make, with which the following steps will compile
the code:

1) Copy make.inc.example to make.inc.
2) Edit make.inc according to the comments within.
3) Run make.

The default setup in make.inc.example is for GCC and should work on any Linux
or MacOS systems with programming tools installed and probably most modern UNIX
systems.

For other platforms/environments, such as MS Windows Visual C++, it is up to
user to set up the build within that platform/environment.

After the build the xdfv executable will be located in the same directory as
the source.  It is up to the user to move it or link to it from other locations.


USAGE
-----

xdfv [OPTIONS] [FILE 1 | FILE 2 | FILE 3 | ...]

Any number of FILEs can be given on the command line to be put into different
tabs.  xdfv will determine the file type either by file extension (.hdf, .h5,
or .nc) or, in the case of HDF5 files, by asking the HDF5 library if a file is
HDF5.  Note: Since NetCDF4 files are in fact HDF5 files with NetCDF metadata
xdfv will first check for the .nc extension to determine if the file should be
interpreted as a NetCDF file.  The options --hdf, --hdf5, and --netcdf can be
used to force how xdfv should try to interpret the file.

To get a full list of command line options execute xdfv with the --help option.


DOCUMENTATION
-------------

The xdfv interface is simple and aims to be intuitive.  A couple of details
worth mentioning:

* Execute xdfv with the --help option to get a list of command line arguments.

* For the table view, to view data in either one or two dimensions, the
dimension range can be specified using standard array slicing syntax.  For
example: 'i', 'i1:', ':i2', or 'i1:i2', where 'i' has a length of one and 'i1'
and 'i2' are the inclusive beginning and end of a range and a blank side of the
':' means the respective bound of the full range.  At most two dimensions can
have a range of more than length one.


CONTACT
-------
For questions, comments, or bug reports contact Greg McGarragh at
greg.mcgarragh@colostate.edu.

Bug reports are greatly appreciated!

Contributions are also welcomed for which proper attribution will be given.
Please send contributions in the form of a github pull request.