Clawpack version 5.9.0 released

[Randall J LeVeque]

Dear Clawpack Users,

We are happy to announce that Clawpack 5.9.0 has been released.

The major changes:

 - In AMRClaw and GeoClaw, the output frame format could previously
   be specified as either 'ascii' or 'binary'.  
   The latter is now an alias for 'binary64', which
   dumps the full precision 8-byte floats for each variable.  We have now
   added a 'binary32' option that truncates the precision to 4-byte floats.
   This cuts the file size in half and still has enough precision for *most*
   applications.  (The computations are still always done with 8-byte
   arithmetic, the truncation is only done for the output.)  For more info, see
   http://www.clawpack.org/output_styles.html
   
 - Gauge output in AMRClaw and GeoClaw can also now be specified as
   'ascii', 'binary64', or 'binary32'.
   See http://www.clawpack.org/gauges.html for instructions.
 
 - In GeoClaw, new "fgout grid" capabilities have been added to allow
   printing output files on fixed grids independent of the AMR structure, at
   many more output times.  This can be useful to create many frames for an
   animation, or for use in post-processing, e.g. for particle tracking.
   See http://www.clawpack.org/fgout.html for more details, and the new
   example $CLAW/geoclaw/examples/tsunami/chile2010_fgmax-fgout.
   
 - The output format of the fgout frames is identical to that of the usual
   output frames, but with different names (e.g. fgout0001.t0001 rather than
   fort.t0001 contains data about fgout grid #1 at the first fgout output time).
   The file format can be specified as 'ascii', 'binary64', or 'binary32'.
   
 - Many minor changes were needed in other repositories to support these new
   output options.  Let us know if you run into problems.

See the release notes for a summary of all changes:
  http://www.clawpack.org/release_5_9_0.html


How to get the latest version:
------------------------------

Please see
    http://www.clawpack.org/installing.html
for several installation options and the list of prerequisites.

**Note:** The simple `pip install --user clawpack` option
will not yet download the latest version, but Pypi should be updated soon.

A new tar file is available at:
    https://github.com/clawpack/clawpack/releases/
 
The tarfile is also permanently archived on Zenodo with DOI 10.5281/zenodo.7026045,
    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7026045
So if you publish results (and also, we hope, the code used to generate them) based on this version, you can rest assured that it will always be available to your readers.  For earlier versions, see
    http://www.clawpack.org/releases.html
   
Tar files for all recent releases can also now be referenced with the single DOI 10.17605/osf.io/kmw6h, convenient if you have used multiple versions in your work, or you want to cite a generic Clawpack DOI.   For more information on how best to cite Clawpack, please see
    http://www.clawpack.org/about.html#citing
 
Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this release. You can view all the commits, diffs, and contributors starting from the release notes page
    http://www.clawpack.org/release_5_9_0.html.

Happy Computing,
  The Clawpack Development Team

[David Ketcheson]

Clawpack is now updated on Pypi, so pip will get you the latest version.