This node contains a brief summary of changes to the DB library and to this guide since the first printing of the ninth edition of this guide in July, 1995. See `NEWS.TXT' and `NEWNEWS.TXT', in the top-level directory of the DB Software Package distribution, for details on these changes, and for information on any more recent changes that may not be described here.
Support for compiling the DB library as a 32-bit MS Windows DLL has been
added (thanks to Bob Farrell). Define the symbols _WIN32 and
_WINDLL when building the DLL, and define the symbol _WIN32
when compiling an application that uses the DLL.
The string `%r' is replaced by the record name wherever it appears in the DB path (see section The Database Path. The string `%Nr', where N is a non-zero digit, is replaced by the first N characters of the record name. When followed by any other character, `%' is an `escape'; thus, for example, to insert a literal `%' in the DB path, use `%%'.
It is now possible to write annotations out-of-order using putann
(see section Annotation Order).
Version 5.0 and later versions of Apple's ISO 9660 CD-ROM driver for the Macintosh handle version number suffixes more sensibly than do earlier versions. When compiling the DB library on the Macintosh, the new driver behavior is assumed by default; if you are still using a pre-5.0 version of this driver, define the symbol FIXISOCD when compiling the DB library.
A new annotation type (LINK) has been defined
(see section Annotation Codes).
A new function was added to the DB library (see section getspf).
A number of changes in the implementation of existing DB library functions now
make use of high-resolution mode (see section Multi-Frequency Records) almost
completely transparent to DB applications. The recommended practice is to call
setgvmode(DB_HIGHRES) before calling annopen,
dbinit, getvec, sampfreq, strtim, or timstr.
By doing so, all DB_Time data visible to the application are in units of
the high-resolution sampling intervals(see section setgvmode).
Note that the resolution of annotation times in annotation files created while in high-resolution mode remains that of the low-resolution sampling intervals. This may change in a future version of the DB library.
The number of signals that may be read simultaneously, DB_MAXSIG,
was increased from 16 to 32.
Support for use of the DB library with Fortran programs was added (see section Using the DB library with other languages).
In release 9.4.0 only, DB library function setheader did not properly
interpret the skew setting made by dbsetskew in the case of an
oversampled signal in a multi-frequency record. This has been corrected.
Four new functions were added to the DB library to simplify management of records with signal files containing prologs or intersignal skews.
see section dbgetskew
see section dbsetskew
see section dbgetstart
see section dbsetstart
Also, see section Glossary, for definitions of prolog and skew.
newheader and setheader now write header files containing skew
and byte offset fields if you have previously set non-zero values for these
parameters using dbsetskew or dbsetstart.
If dberror is invoked before any errors have occurred, the character
string it returns now contains the DB library version number. Versions earlier
than 9.4 returned an empty string in this case.
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