* * * New Release of GrADS version 2.0.a8 * * *

[Jennifer Adams]

Hi, Everyone --
Hoop has provided a 32-bit linux build that is listed as "i686" on the  
GrADS downloads page.
--Jennifer

On Mar 26, 2010, at 1:36 PM, Jennifer Adams wrote:

> Dear All (on both lists):
>
> I have posted a new version of GrADS: 2.0.a8. The GrADS downloads  
> web page (http://iges.org/grads/downloads.html) has been updated  
> with links to the source code and a few pre-compiled binaries. This  
> release has many new features, including several that were required  
> to support COLA's work with extremely high resolution data sets.
>
> GrADS version 2.0.a8 is linked with netCDF-4, which supports  
> compressed netCDF files and also has a new OPeNDAP interface for  
> gridded data sets. This new version of the netCDF library makes it  
> possible to have a single, fully-functional GrADS executable, named  
> "grads". The support for reading and writing compressed netCDF is  
> mostly invisible, except that the I/O is faster, and the compressed  
> files take up a lot less disk space. The use of compressed netCDF  
> has been fully integrated into the workflow at COLA, and has quickly  
> become essential to our operations. We encourage all netCDF users to  
> try it out and see for yourselves how much time and disk space this  
> data format can save. The netCDF-4 support includes new commands (q  
> cache, q cachesf, set cachesf, set chunksize), new options to 'set  
> sdfwrite' (-nc3/-nc4, -chunk, -zip, -flt/-dbl), and a new descriptor  
> file entry: CACHESIZE. Please begin by reading the User's Guide page  
> entitled "Reading and Writing Compressed Data Sets" at http://iges.org/grads/gadoc/compression.html 
>  . A side benefit to the netCDF-4 development was that it led to an  
> improvement in the HDF5 interface, which is now significantly faster  
> than in the previous release.
>
> GrADS version 2.0.a8 also supports reading and drawing shapefiles.  
> The shapefile interface is adapted from an original design by  
> Graziano Giuliani. There are several new commands: 'draw shp', 'q  
> shp', 'q dbf', and 'set shpopts', and a User's Guide page entitled  
> "Drawing and Querying the Contents of a Shapefile" at http://iges.org/grads/gadoc/shapefiles.html 
>  .
>
> COLA's work with extremely high resolution data sets led to a bunch  
> of changes to the GRIB interface. We added support for GRIB1 and  
> GRIB2 files that are greater than 2Gb. This is handled with a "-big"  
> option to gribmap. A simple change to the user interface, but a  
> fairly significant change to code "under the hood." The gribmap  
> utility now also supports the "-b" option for GRIB2 data sets, a  
> option that is required for the new CFS Reanalysis. Both gribmap and  
> wgrib have been modified to support ECMWF grib files that have  
> record lengths bigger than 8MB.
>
> There is a new graphics output option that is useful for the  
> interactive display of high-resolution data: 'set gxout imap'. This  
> quickly draws shaded grid boxes just like 'gxout grfill', but the  
> metafile is not updated so printim and print will not work. But it  
> saves a lot of time when browsing through data and 'fishing' for  
> something interesting to look at.
>
> Two final miscellaneous items in the new release:
> * Added template substitution strings %t4, %t5, %t6, %tm4, %tm5, %tm6
> * New command 'q contours' returns contour colors and levels
>
> Finally, if you have not done so already, please subscribe to the  
> new forum, as the folks at CINECA will be shutting down gradsusr at list.cineca.it 
>  very soon.
>
> --Jennifer
>
> p.s. For those of you that build GrADS from src, the configure  
> script will look for $SUPPLIBS/bin/nc-config to find out if the  
> netcdf library is DAP-enabled. I have also added libncurses.a to the  
> supplibs collection, in an effort to make the linux builds more  
> portable. Please look at http://iges.org/grads/gadoc/supplibs.html  
> for links to all the latest versions of the libraries that I am  
> using. There are newer versions of curl, hdf5, and netcdf, and  
> libdap and gadap had be be rebuilt with the newer version of curl.
>
> --
> Jennifer M. Adams
> IGES/COLA
> 4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302
> Calverton, MD 20705
> jma at cola.iges.org
>
>
>

--
Jennifer M. Adams
IGES/COLA
4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302
Calverton, MD 20705
jma at cola.iges.org



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