FoX 4.1.0 release
Andrew Walker
This is the announcement of a new release of FoX, the Fortran XML
library. As well as containing various bugfixes that have been
collected over the last nine months this release includes a handful of
new features. Notable is the inclusion of a new output module named
wkml. This can be used for producing KML documents for displaying
geographical data in applications such as Google Earth.
Compressed tar files can be downloaded from <http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfbamw/FoX/source/
>. Updated documentation can be fund at <http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfbamw/FoX/DoX/
>. Cryptographic hashes of the various files are appended to the end
of this email along with a list of changes.
I would like to thank all those who have contributed to this release
by providing patches, bug reports, requests for new features and
clarifications to the documentation. This feedback is always
appreciated.
Best wishes,
Andrew
New Features and Enhancements:
===========================
* Add wkml, a KML output module (see below)
* Add invalid-pretty-print dom extension option: This new dom
configuration option allows XML files generated using the dom module
to be pretty printed. Unlike the unsupported format-pretty-print
option this does not preserve validity in all cases.
* Add FoX_[set|get]_fatal_[errors|warnings] to the common module:
These four procedures can be used to turn FoX generated warnings and
errors into potentially stack trace generating aborts. This can be
helpful in tracing the origin of errors when FoX is integrated with a
large code.
* Makefile modified to allow -j flag to work: passing the -j flag to
the make command now allows compilation and testing to proceed in
parallel.
* Portability workarounds for the Portland Group compiler (pgf90)
WKML:
======
A new output module, wkml, has been added to FoX. This works in a
similar way to the wcml module and generates XML in a domain specific
language. In the case of wkml the language is KML (formerly Keyhole
Markup Language), which is designed to 'annotate' virtual globes such
as Google Earth.
The module was largely developed by Gen-tao Chiang (University of
Cambridge) as part of his thesis work and I've integrated a version of
his code base from early 2009. Because of the length of time it's
taken me to do the integration the version now in FoX differs from Gen-
tao's current version - I think it's fair to say that the FoX version
is more robust (it has a test suite and I've fixed a number of bugs)
while Gen-tao's code offers additional features. For existing users of
wkml,
the changes I've made include:
* Add documentation to the FoX tree
* Only export documented procedures from fox_wkml module (this reduces
the functionality)
* Rename the color derived type to color_t
* Change the kml namespace to http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2 to agree
with the current schema
* Include comprehensive test suite (> 100 tests, exposed some of the
problems below and all tests produce valid kml as per the schema, or
generate errors)
* Use FoX_error instead of stop to report error conditions
* Allow headings to be reals and > 180 degrees as per schema
* Check that any href element contains a valid URL
* Enable the --enable-dummy configure flag
* Allow cmake to be used to build the wkml module
* Fix a number of bugs.
These changes may break existing applications that make use of any
older version of wkml. My advice is for all wkml users to try to port
their code to use the version in FoX 4.1.0. If this works I would
stick with the new version. If not please report problems to this
mailing list so we can prioritise the forward porting of new features
from Gen-tao's code, correct any errors I've introduced into wkml, and
produce a robust KML output module.
Bug fixes:
========
* Export dom getParameterNames subroutine so it can be used.
* Avoid using uninitialised variables to seed the PRNG used to
generate UUIDs
* Make it possible to use CMake to build examples
Outstanding issues:
================
These are listed at <http://github.com/andreww/fox/issues> and include:
* Multiple bugs in version 11 of the Intel Fortran compiler mean that
ifort 11 cannot compile FoX
* Three of the 'abnormal example' URIs given in rfc 2396 are processed
incorrectly leading to one test failing in /utils
* Parsing large XML files using the SAX or DOM modules can be slow
* The FoX aclocal.m4 is not usable with new versions of autoconfig
Hashes:
=======
MD5(FoX-4.1.0-full.tar.gz)= b05d63ebf44483812afaef5d22d0595c
SHA1(FoX-4.1.0-full.tar.gz)= 0ebf95734aa4f6f656c8b7e73e4cd411d6fd2870
MD5(FoX-4.1.0.tar.gz)= 6860a8902d8ff58f3055c4843bc51dde
SHA1(FoX-4.1.0.tar.gz)= 81d3a85bcda7cb0aadd365d2db2fa0f21e43044c
MD5(FoX-4.1.0-wxml.tar.gz)= 41962aa35023b15aede8d3c499dc1aba
SHA1(FoX-4.1.0-wxml.tar.gz)= 5c7dbe1300edb63f2818c1675d2d897c4dce53c6
MD5(FoX-4.1.0-wcml.tar.gz)= d6840b8fa6c02678959e8f6a3294b62c
SHA1(FoX-4.1.0-wcml.tar.gz)= fd5894318ca00627c14e00b73eacee66f1343654
MD5(FoX-4.1.0-wkml.tar.gz)= 36640c89f643ca6db79010eadc00fc6d
SHA1(FoX-4.1.0-wkml.tar.gz)= 732624f60dda11de4d29caa0423d5ef441dfa801
MD5(FoX-4.1.0-sax.tar.gz)= 1d8b3ee5f2afa504810a9cc4aa85aa4c
SHA1(FoX-4.1.0-sax.tar.gz)= 3790863931d46f3764d434e4fd071848a482370a
MD5(FoX-4.1.0-dom.tar.gz)= 7c0d7af1117c9027a10ed9156d0273cd
SHA1(FoX-4.1.0-dom.tar.gz)= 3dd0688c09b246a4f318ce09cd444bedb500885e
--
Dr Andrew Walker
Department of Earth Sciences
University College London
Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, UK
phone: +44 (0)20 7679 2425
email: a.wa...@ucl.ac.uk
web: http://www.es.ucl.ac.uk/people/walker.htm