create FAQ seed document for CF conventions

[graybeal]

Create a seed document for a FAQ for CF conventions. Expect it to be added to the (new) CF wiki on github, exact place to be determined. (Matthew Harris and Jeff Painter to discuss the exact place.)

[graybeal]

All, until we start putting content on a wiki you are welcome to add both comments and suggested FAQ questions/categories in this ticket.

First draft of topics for questions, those in quotes are specific topics I've thought of:

CF Conventions - General

• who/what/when/where/why, only as needed for context
• 'How to ask questions' and 'How to propose and discuss changes'
• 'How and when changes are accepted (finalized) and shown in the document'

CF Conventions - Technical

• big picture concepts that can help understand the conventions
• 'Relation to netCDF and COARDS conventions'
• 'Discrete Sampling Geometries and their application'
• 'UDUNITS and CF' -- how to build and use CF-compatible units

CF Standard Names

• General and specific information about purpose and mechanisms of standard names
• 'Components of a standard name' -- name, modifiers, required attributes
• 'How to find the standard name you need'
• 'How to request a new standard name'
• 'How to build a good standard name'
• 'Examples of common standard name phrases'
• 'What can be in a standard name?' -- different descriptive categories
• 'I thought X was the official list of standard names' -- what are the services and how are they different
• 'Mappings of standard names to other vocabularies'

General strategy is to reference other material when available, but some repetition will be inevitable.

[graybeal]

First version of questions (no answers) has been created, and is being updated at ​https://github.com/graybealski/cf-conventions-work/blob/master/FAQ.md. (Markdown format.) This location is a hack, until the new CF site organization stabilizes.

If you want to make changes, either fork it, make your changes, and do a pull request, or ask me to add you as a modifier of the repository.

[graybeal]

Adding a comment to show this ticket is active. The FAQ is being regularly updated, and we're just waiting for a good opportunity to include it in the main CF repository.

[davidhassell]

Hello,

Am I right in thinking that the desired FAQ is now in the main repository at ​http://cfconventions.org/faq.html ?

I think that this even surpasses the requirement to create a seed document, so might I suggest that we close this ticket as resolved?

Many thanks for all of the effort in producing this,

All the best,

David

[davidhassell]

Hello,

Am I right in thinking that the desired FAQ is now in the main repository at ​http://cfconventions.org/faq.html ?

I think that this even surpasses the requirement to create a seed document, so might I suggest that we close this ticket as resolved?

Many thanks for all of the effort in producing this,

All the best,

David

[graybeal]

You are so right. Thanks for the reminder, marked as fixed.