README  -*- Text -*-

* What are NetCDF tools?

	The NetCDF tools are a few tools to operate on NetCDF and, by
	utilizing the compatibility API, HDF4 files, and intended to be
	used from the Shell scripts.

	The NetCDF tools package is currently comprised of a couple of
	simplistic Shell wrappers over the respective NetCDF functions
	(ncattget and ncattput), and a more sophisticated ncget tool.

* The ncget tool

	The ncget tool implements a like to (for NetCDF), or complements
	the hdp dumpsds (for HDF4) functionalilty, and allows a selected
	part of a NetCDF variable or an HDF4 scientific data set (SDS)
	to be extracted in either an ASCII or binary (machine float,
	machine double, or as-returned formats) form, optionally
	applying the transformation specified by the scale_factor and
	add_offset attributes.

	This tool allows to feed NetCDF variables' (or HDF4 SDS') data
	to tools, designed to operate on either ASCII (text) or raw
	(binary) data.

	The tool complements the standard HDF4 hdp tool in the following
	ways:

	* the scale_factor and add_offset attributes are applied; these
	  could be overriden by the respective command line options;

	* the data could be extracted in the binary machine single- or
	  double-precision floating point number form, as well as the
	  raw form (the same form as returned by the respective library
	  calls) and the ASCII form;

	* GNU long options are supported, allowing for better
	  self-describing Shell code.

	Authors don't know a tool providing a similar functionality for
	the NetCDF files.

* History

	The working prototype of the ncget tool was written in Tcl using
	the Tcl-NAP extension in 2006 by Ivan Shmakov.  It was then
	rewritten in C for speed by Anton Reznikov the same year.  From
	the October, 2006, and until March, 2007, Ivan Shmakov provided
	further bug-fixes, clean-ups and enhancements.

	The simplistic ncattget and ncattput tools were written by Ivan
	Shmakov in November, 2009.

	Ivan Shmakov <ivan@main.uusia.org>

README ends here
