Provided by: hdf-compass_0.7~b15-1_all 
NAME
hdfcompass - HDF Compass Documentation
This document provide information about the HDF Compass application.
IN BRIEF
HDF Compass is an experimental viewer program for HDF5 and related formats, designed to complement other
more complex applications like HDFView. Strong emphasis is placed on clean minimal design, and maximum
extensibility through a plugin system for new formats.
HDF Compass is written in Python, but ships as a native application on Windows, OS X, and Linux, by using
PyInstaller and Py2App to package the app.
CONTENTS
Requirements
TBD
License
Application License
Copyright Notice and License Terms for HDF Compass - Viewer for HDF5 and other file formats
----
HDF Compass Copyright 2014-2016 by The HDF Group.
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted for any
purpose (including commercial purposes) provided that the following conditions are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions, and
the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions, and
the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or materials provided with the distribution.
3. In addition, redistributions of modified forms of the source or binary code must carry prominent
notices stating that the original code was changed and the date of the change.
4. All publications or advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software are asked, but
not required, to acknowledge that it was developed by The HDF Group and credit the contributors.
5. Neither the name of The HDF Group, nor the name of any Contributor may be used to endorse or promote
products derived from this software without specific prior written permission from The HDF Group or
the Contributor, respectively.
DISCLAIMER: THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE HDF GROUP AND THE CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTY OF
ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. In no event shall The HDF Group or the Contributors be liable for
any damages suffered by the users arising out of the use of this software, even if advised of the
possibility of such damage.
Additional Copyright and License Information
Copyright and license terms for the following software can be found in the adjacent subdirectory
Additional_Legal/. This information was obtained from sources provided by each software package provider
at the location specified under "Original source:" and was current as of 19 December 2014.
HDF Compass uses selected icons from the following icon sets:
KDE Oxygen icon set
Provided by: KDE Community Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/KDE_Oxygen_Icon_Set_Copyright_and_License.txt Original source: ‐
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html (via link from ‐
https://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Oxygen/Licensing) License type: GNU LGPL version 3 license
HydroPro icon set
Provided by: Ben Fleming via MediaDesign Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/HydroPro_Icons_Terms.txt Original source: ‐
http://www.iconarchive.com/icons/media-design/hydropro/readme.txt License type: Freeware
Pre-built HDF Compass binaries include the following software. None of this software is present in whole
or in part in the HDF Compass source code.
Python interpreter
Provided by: Python Software Foundation Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/Python_Copyright_and_License.txt Original source: ‐
https://docs.python.org/3/license.html License type: BSD-style license
wxPython GUI layer
Provided by: Julian Smart, Vadim Zeitlin, Stefan Csomor, Robert Roebling, and other members of
the wxWidgets team Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/wxWidgets_Copyrights_and_Licenses.txt Original source: ‐
http://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.0/page_copyright.html License type: GNU LGPL version 2 license with
exception
PyInstaller runtime support code (Windows & Linux only)
Provided by: PyInstaller Development Team Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/PyInstaller_Copyrights_and_Licenses.txt Original source: ‐
https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/blob/develop/COPYING.txt License type: GNU GPL
version 2 license with exception
HDF5 for Python (h5py)
Provided by: Andrew Collette and contributors Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/h5py_Copyrights_and_Licenses.txt Original source: ‐
http://docs.h5py.org/en/latest/licenses.html License type: BSD-style license
HydrOffice BAG (hyo2.bag)
Provided by: G.Masetti, B.R.Calder, and contributors Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/hydroffice_bag_Copyrights_and_Licenses.txt Original source: ‐
https://bitbucket.org/ccomjhc/hyo_bag/raw/tip/COPYING.txt License type: BSD-style license
NumPy Provided by: NumPy Developers Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/NumPy_Copyright_and_License.txt Original source: ‐
http://www.numpy.org/license.html License type: BSD-style license
matplotlib
Provided by: Matplotlib Development Team Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/matplotlib_Copyright_and_License.txt Original source: ‐
http://matplotlib.org/users/license.html License type: BSD-style license
PyDAP Provided by: Roberto De Almeida Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/PyDAP_Copyright_and_License.txt Original source: ‐
http://www.pydap.org/license.html License type: BSD-style license
ADIOS Provided by: ADIOS Developers (ORNL), and contributors Copyright and license information:
additional_legal/ADIOS_Copyrights_and_Licenses.txt Original source: ‐
https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/center-projects/adios/ License type: BSD-style license
How to install
TBD
How to use
TBD
How to contribute [developer]
TBD
Data Model [developer]
Introduction
This document describes the publically accessible data model package which is used by HDFCompass to
display objects in a file, OpenDAP server or other resource.
The data model is implemented as a collection of classes in a top-level Python package, compass_model,
which is completely independent of the GUI code. It has no dependencies beyond the Python standard
library. This makes it possible to develop and test new plugins independently of GUI development; in
particular, the automated Python unit-testing framework can be used, which is impossible for code that
depends on the GUI.
The classes in compass_model are abstract, and define a standard interface for objects like containers,
regular multidimensional arrays, images, and key/value stores. "Plug-ins" consist of concrete
implementations which satisfy this interface. For example, the built-in HDF5 plugin which ships with
HDFCompass implements a Group class which inherits from compass_model.Container, and a Dataset class
which inherits from compass_model.Array.
The GUI has a collection of viewers which can display any object following the interfaces defined in
compass_model. For example, compass_model.Container implementations are displayed in a browser-style
view, with list, icon, and tree displays possible. Likewise, compass_model.Array implementations are
displayed in a spreadsheet-like view, with facilities for plotting data.
Multiple concrete classes can handle the same object in a file. For example, an HDF5 image is
implemented as a dataset with special attributes. Three classes in the HDF5 plugin are capable of
handling such an object, which inherit respectively from compass_model.Image, compass_model.Array, and
compass_model.KeyValue; the last represents HDF5 attributes.
When an icon in the GUI is double-clicked, the default (last-registered) class is used to open to object
in the file. The other classes are made available in a context menu, for example, if the user wants to
open an image with the Array viewer or see the HDF5 attributes.
Numeric types (integers, floats, multidimensional data) are handled with the NumPy type model, which can
represent nearly all formats. Python strings (byte and Unicode) are also supported.
Data stores
class Store
Represents a file or remote resource which contains objects. Objects within the store can be
retrieved using keys, which may be any hashable Python object. For example, an HDF5 store
generally uses string keys representing paths in the file, although object and region reference
objects are also valid.
Objects may be retrieved using the __getitem__ syntax (obj = store[key]). The retrieved object is
a Node instance. The exact class depends on the order in which Node handlers were registered; see
the push method below.
Methods related to the plugin system
Typically, a model will implement several classes based on the compass_model abstract classes such as
Container or Array. This rasises the question: when an object is retrieved from the data store, which
class should be used?
The answer is that each Node subclass you write should be "registered" with your Store subclass, and have
a static method called canhandle. When an object is opened, by default the most recently registered
class which reports it can understand the object is used.
All registered subclasses may be retrieved via the gethandlers function, which an optionally request that
only subclasses capable of handling key be returned. This is the basis for the right-click "Open As"
menu in the GUI.
classmethod Store.push(nodeclass)
Register a Node subclass. These are kept in a list inside the class; when an object is retrieved
from the store, the first class for which nodeclass.canhandle(store, key) returns True is
instantiated and returned.
Store.__getitem__(key)
Open an object in the store, using the last registered class which reports it can open the key.
Store.gethandlers(key=None)
Retrieve all registered Node subclasses, optionally filtering by those which report they can
handle key.
Store.__contains__(key)
(Abstract) True if key is exists in the store, False otherwise.
Other methods & properties
static Store.canhandle(url)
(Abstract) Return True if this class can make sense of url, False otherwise. This method is used
by the GUI when determining which Store implementation to use when opening a file. For example,
the HDF5 plugin uses h5py.is_hdf5(filename).
Store.__init__(url)
(Abstract) Create a new store instance from the data at url. URLs are given in the
scheme://locator fashion. For example, an HDF5 file might be located by
file:///path/to/file.hdf5.
Store.close():
(Abstract) Discontinue access to the data store.
Store.get_parent(key)
(Abstract) Return the object which contains key, or None if no such object exists.
Store.url
(Abstract) The URL used to open the store
Store.displayname
(Abstract) A short name used for the store (e.g. basename(filepath)).
Store.root
(Abstract) A Node instance representing the starting point in the file. For hierarchical formats,
this would be the root container. For scalar formats (FITS, for example), this could be e.g. an
Array or Image instance.
Store.file_extensions
For plugins that support local file access, this is a dictionary mapping file kinds to lists of
extensions in "glob" format, e.g. {'HDF5 File': ['.h5', '.hdf5']}. This will be used to populate
the filter in the file-open dialog, among other things.
Nodes
A "node" is any object which lives in the data store. The Node class defined below is the base class for
more interesting abstract classes like containers and arrays. It defines much of the interface.
class Node
Base class for all objects which live in a data store.
You generally shouldn't inherit from Node directly, but from one of the more useful Node
subclasses in this file. Direct Node subclasses can't do anything interesting in the GUI; all
they do is show up in the browser.
Node.icons
Class attribute containing a dict for icon support. Keys should be integers giving icon size;
values are a callable returning a byte string with PNG image data. Example: icons = {16:
get_png_16, 32: get_png_32}. Since icons are a pain to handle, default icons are provided by
compass_model and this attribute is optional.
Node.classkind
(Abstract) A short string (2 or 3 words) describing what the class represents. This will show up
in e.g. the "Open As" context menu. Example: "HDF5 Image" or "Swath".
static Node.canhandle(store, key)
(Abstract) Determine whether this class can usefully represent the object. Keep in mind that keys
are not technically required to be strings.
Node.__init__(store, key):
(Abstract) Create a new instance representing the object pointed to by key in store.
Node.key
(Abstract) Unique key which identifies this object in the store. Keys may be any hashable object,
although strings are the most common.
Node.store
(Abstract) The data store to which the object belongs.
Node.displayname
(Abstract) A short name for display purposes (16 chars or so; more will be ellipsized).
Node.description
(Abstract) Descriptive string (possibly multi-line).
Containers
class Container(Node)
Represents an object which holds other objects, like an HDF5 group or a filesystem directory.
Implementations will be displayed using the browser view.
Container.__len__()
(Abstract) Get the number of objects directly attached to the container.
Container.__getitem__(index)
(Abstract) Retrieve the node at index. Note this returns a Node instance, not a key.
Arrays
class Array(Node)
The array type represents a multidimensional array, using an interface inspired by Numpy arrays.
Implementations will be displayed in a spreadsheet-style viewer with controls for subsetting and
plotting.
Array.shape
Shape of the array, as a Python tuple.
Array.dtype
NumPy data type object representing the type of the array.
Array.__getitem__(indices)
Retrieve data from the array, using the standard array-slicing syntax data = array[idx1, idx2,
idx3]. indices are the slicing arguments. Only integer indexes and slice objects (representing
ranges) are supported.
Key-Value lists
class KeyValue(Node)
Represents an object which contains a sequence of key: value attributes. Keys must be strings.
Values may be Python or NumPy objects. Implementations will be displayed using a list-like
control.
KeyValue.keys
(Abstract) A list containing all (string) keys contained in the object.
KeyValue.__getitem__(name)
(Abstract) Retrieve the value associated with string name.
Images
class Image(Node)
Represents an image. The current interface supports only true-color RGB images with the origin at
upper left, although this could easily be extended to more complex formats including RGBA or
palette-based images.
Implementations are displayed in an image viewer.
Image.width
Image width in pixels
Image.height
Image height in pixels
Image.data
Image data. Currently RGB, pixel-interlaced.
Top-level functions
One public function is defined in compass_model:
push(storeclass)
Register a new Store subclass with HDFCompass. When a URL is being opened, the class will be
queried (via storeclass.canhandle) to see if it can make sense of the URL.
How to release [developer]
Versioning
The following files need to be update for each new release:
• HDFCompass.1file.spec
• HDFCompass.1folder.spec
• setup.cfg
• setup.py
• spec.json
• docs/conf.py
• hdf_compass/utils/__init__.py
PyInstaller
For the HDFCompass.1file.spec file, you need to verify that the following parameters are passed to the
EXE() function:
• console=False: to avoid that a console window is opened at run-time for standard I/O
• debug=False: to avoid that the boot-loader issues progress messages while initializing and starting the
bundled app
How to freeze [developer]
TBD
• Index
• Module Index
• Search Page
AUTHOR
The HDF Group
COPYRIGHT
2024, The HDF Group
0.7 Aug 09, 2024 HDFCOMPASS(1)