SNCTOOLS and the MathWorks
=======================================================================
Yes, it's true, the MathWorks has released support for netCDF.  And
SNCTOOLS can use MATLAB's native support as a backend.  It should just
work, no need to alter your existing code or setup.

Please note that SNCTOOLS is not supported by the MathWorks.  If you
have questions about SNCTOOLS, you should continue to use the 
email address listed on sourceforge.

SNCTOOLS and NetCDF-4
=======================================================================
SNCTOOLS supports netCDF-4 files provided you do one of two things.  
You can read and write to netCDF-4 classic files (those files that do
not use any advanced netCDF-4 features, like compound or variable-
length datasets) if you >>>> STATICALLY <<< recompile the netcdf-4 and 
hdf5 libraries and then relink mexnc.  The R2008b MathWorks netCDF
support only extends to 3.6.2.  

If you do not compile the libraries statically, you will get an invalid
mex-file, as the 1.8.x version of hdf5 will conflict with the 1.6.5
version used by MATLAB.  Please see the instructions for mexnc for 
further details about compiling mexnc.  

The 2nd route is perhaps easier, but you only get read support.  The
java backend can read netCDF-4 classic files just fine, just make sure
you have version 4.0 of toolsUI or better.


=======================================================================
Of all the routines in this m-file collection, the most useful (in my
humble opinion) are as follows
	
	1. nc_varget    - reads a netcdf variable
	2. nc_varput    - writes to a netcdf variable
	3. nc_attget    - reads a netcdf attribute
	4. nc_attput    - writes a netcdf attribute
	5. nc_padheader - pads header section of large netCDF files
	6. nc_dump      - prints netcdf metadata

There is a subdirectory called "tests" which has routines that test
the m-files of SNCTOOLS.  You really don't need to worry about this
unless you are convinced that there is something wrong with one of
the m-files.  In that case, you can run the test suite by changing
directories into "tests" and running "test_snctools" from the matlab
command line.  

ROW MAJOR VS COLUMN MAJOR ORDER
=======================================================================
Mexnc is written in C and therefore retrieves data in row-major order.
MATLAB is a column-major order beast, however.  This results in a 
dimension mismatch because the fastest-varying dimension in MATLAB is
the 1st dimension, whereas it is the last dimension in C.  Therefore, 
Mexnc has historically transposed data before writing to file and 
after reading from file.  This imposes a performance hit.  You can now
set a preference to tell SNCTOOLS to not transpose the data.

    >> setpref('SNCTOOLS','PRESERVE_FVD',true);

This could very well break code written prior to R2008b, so use this
option at your own risk.  

The default value is false, i.e. NOT transposing the data.  

SNCTOOLS and OPeNDAP
=======================================================================
SNCTOOLS can use java to read OPeNDAP URLs.  In order to do this, 
follow these steps.

	Then download toolsUI-2.2.22.jar or higher from
	ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf-java/ 
	
	Make sure that you DO NOT start matlab with the -nojvm option.  
	
	Add this jar file to your dynamic java path from within matlab
	using javaaddpath, i.e.

		>> javaaddpath ( '/path/to/toolsUI-2.2.22.jar' );

	From the command line, you can then turn on the java backend with 

		>> setpref ( 'SNCTOOLS', 'USE_JAVA', true );

Note that if you want netcdf-4 support, you need the 4.0 version of
the jar file.