Dear Jonathan,
The alias structure has developed into a deprecation mechanism and some of the more recent corrections have changed the meanings of the terms, so that the term and its alias are no longer synonyms. Using the alias mechanism to establish synonyms between undeprecated terms invites confusion - it's like building RDF triples with no predicate.
Should the decision be taken to develop the Standard Names into a semantic network (which has been advocated at GO-ESSP meetings) then a more robust mechanism for specifying the relationship between terms is needed. I can support this, but the infrastructure on the CF site would need a minor upgrade.
Cheers, Roy.
________________________________________
From: cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu [cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gregory [j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk]
Sent: 02 February 2010 18:43
To: John Graybeal
Cc: CF Metadata List
Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] seeking CF name for total water column height
Dear John
Yes, good suggestion, we could adopt a new pattern vertical_distance_between_X
and_Y for cases where "thickness" sounds peculiar.
Aliases are really intended for cases where we make mistakes or change our
minds, rather than to provide synonyms deliberately. We've preferred to force
ourselves to agree where possible on a minimal vocabulary.
Best wishes
Jonathan
_______________________________________________
CF-metadata mailing list
CF-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
--
This message (and any attachments) is for the recipient only. NERC
is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the contents
of this email and any reply you make may be disclosed by NERC unless
it is exempt from release under the Act. Any material supplied to
NERC may be stored in an electronic records management system.
Received on Tue Feb 02 2010 - 14:23:49 GMT
