[CF-metadata] CF provisional standards

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 09:04:21 +0000

Dear Steve

I think your comment belongs more in the thread about the projections than
about the process of approving changes. :-) The points you raise are
interesting, but I can't see how provisional status or test implementations
would help us to answer such questions in any way that thinking and talking,
before we make an agreement, already does.

Supporting more than one projection as Bert would like do increases
interoperability, rather than reducing it, as far as I can see. Firstly, the
files still contain the required 2D lat and lon, so any application can
locate the data without understanding the grid mappings. Secondly, the two
grid mappings might well be the same kind of projection, just with different
parameters, and Bert was asking for a way to store this, rather than for new
kind of projection. Thirdly, providing the projection coordinates in the
systems supported by two different countries makes the files usable in both
places without either having to write software to support the other. If you
provide N projections, that is actually less work than N(N-1)/2 systems of
translation between the projections. I hope that's a correct summary of Bert's
aims.

Best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Thu Nov 30 2006 - 02:04:21 GMT