Dear Colleagues,
I have a question: what should be MIME media type for CF-netCDF data?
This issue was originated in the GALEON IE project,
but I think it is better to consult entire CF community before taking
much action.
There seems to be several solutions.
Examples begin with "x-" because there seems to be no urgent need for
IANA registration.
1) application/x-netcdf; profile=cf-1.3
- The idea is "netCDF is a format, CF is convention on the format."
- Some implementation of MIME dispatcher doesn't relate applications
to parameters.
2) application/x-cf+netcdf
- The idea is "netCDF to CF is XML to XHTML."
- CF and other netCDFs can be distinguished even if parameter is ignored
- Some doubt necessity for creating "+netcdf" convention.
3) application/x-cf-netcdf
- Improved version of 2), without controversial "+netcdf" convention.
- We can tell CF and other netCDFs, too.
- Similar example: image/tiff and image/tiff-fx
I firstly suggested 2), but now I'm inclined to support 3).
MIME media type is originally created for dispatcher software such as
web browsers or email user agent (or file type association of explorer
of MS Windows).
Unfortunately many implementations cannot handle parameters of media type.
So we cannot associate different software to netcdf dataset with
different conventions,
if we choose solutions with parameters (such as 1)).
That might be no problem for most of the CF community,
where most of data is in regular spatiotemporal grid and can be
handled by one smart software such as IDV.
However, netCDF can be used by distant discipline or different data model,
and it is likely that different software is preffered for different conventions.
I would appreciate much if I could have any frank response....
Regards,
--
TOYODA Eizi (aka Eiji): toyoda at gfd-dennou.org
Received on Wed Jul 23 2008 - 11:46:19 BST
