Introduction
============
This package provides a Python API to open, create, and manipulate NeXus 
data <http://www.nexusformat.org/> written in the HDF5 format. It also includes 
a remote file server to allow files to be opened across a network. The 
'nexusformat' package provides the underlying API for NeXpy
<http://nexpy.github.io/nexpy>, which provides a GUI interface for
visualizing and analyzing NeXus data. 

The latest development version is always available from NeXpy's GitHub
repository <https://github.com/nexpy/nexusformat>.


Installing and Running
======================

Released versions of NeXpy-RO are available on PyPI. If you have the Python 
Setup Tools <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools> installed, then you can 
install using either::

    $ pip install nexusformat

or:: 

    $ easy_install nexusformat 

The latest development versions of nexpy-api can be downloaded from the NeXpy 
Git repository <https://github.com/nexpy/nexusformat>.

    $ git clone http://github.com/nexpy/nexusformat.git

To install in the standard Python location:

    $ cd nexusformat
    $ python setup.py install

To install in an alternate location:

    $ python setup.py install --prefix=/path/to/installation/dir

Prerequisites
=============
The following libraries are used by the full installation of NeXpy. There is 
more details of the nature of these dependencies in the NeXpy documentation
(http://nexpy.github.io/nexpy).

h5py                 http://www.h5py.org/
numpy                http://numpy.org

The remote server requires the Pyro4 package.

pyro4                http://pythonhosted.org//Pyro4/

The following environment variable may need to be set

PYTHONPATH --> must include paths to numpy if installed in a nonstandard place

All of the above are included in the Enthought Python Distribution v7.3.

User Support
============
Consult the NeXpy documentation at http://nexpy.github.io/nexpy for details 
of both the Python command-line API and how to use the NeXpy GUI. 

If you discover any bugs, please submit a Github issue to
https://github.com/nexpy/nexusformat/issues, preferably with relevant tracebacks.
