HDF5 documents and links 
Introduction to HDF5 
HDF5 User's Guide 
HDF5 Reference Manual 
HDF5 Application Developer's Guide 

HDF5 Application Developer's Guide

These documents provide information of particular interest to developers of applications that employ the HDF5 library.

 
HDF5 Library Changes
    from Release to Release
A summary of changes in the HDF5 library
 
What’s New
    in HDF5 Release 1.8.0
A brief summary of new features in this HDF5 release
 
Supported Configuration
    Features Summary
A summary of configuration features supported in this release    (external link)
 
Release 1.8.0 and Data
    Format Compatibility
“New Features in HDF5 Release 1.8.0 and Format Compatibility Considerations”
A discussion of data format compatibility issues to consider in the transition to Release 1.8.0
 
HDF5 Image and
    Palette Specification
A specification for the implementation of images and palettes in HDF5 applications
 
Mapping HDF4 Objects
    to HDF5 Objects
Guidelines for translating HDF4 file objects into valid HDF5 file objects   (PDF format only)
 
Fill Value and Space
    Allocation Issues
A summary of HDF5 fill value and storage allocation issues   (external link)
Fill Value and Space
    Allocation Behavior
A table summarizing of the behavioral interactions of HDF5 fill value and storage allocation settings   (external link)
 
SZIP Compression
    in HDF5
A description of SZIP compression in HDF5, H5Pset_szip, terms of use and copyright notice, and references   (external link)
 
Shuffle Performance An analysis of bzip and gzip compression performance in HDF5 with and without the shuffle filter, H5Pset_shuffle   (external link)
 
Generic Properties An overview of and the motivation for the implementation and use of generic properties in HDF5   (external link)
 
Error-detecting Codes
    for HDF5
A discussion of error-detection codes, e.g., checksums, in HDF5   (external link)
Fletcher32 Checksum
    Design and Spec
Design, API function specification, and test for the Fletcher32 checksum implementation in HDF5   (external link)
 

The HDF5 source code, as distributed to users and developers, contains two additional files that will be of interest to readers of this document. Both files are located at the top level of the HDF5 source code tree and are duplicated here for your reference:
RELEASE.txt Technical notes regarding this release
HISTORY.txt A release-by-release history of the HDF5 library



HDF5 documents and links 
Introduction to HDF5 
HDF5 User's Guide 
HDF5 Reference Manual 
HDF5 Application Developer's Guide 

The HDF Group Help Desk:
Describes HDF5 Release 1.8.7, targeted for May 2011.
Last modified: 17 February 2011
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