Hi Jonathan,
Thank you for taking this on, I think this is heading in a good direction. My hope is that we will get to a point where any proposed std name that fits these rules will just need to be rubber stamped (since nobody will bother proposing a green dog, and nobody will use it if they do, so little harm will be done if we don't catch it :-)).
A couple of small suggestions:
1) In the phenomenon section, you list both 'due_to' and 'from'. However, from examining the patterns, the only time 'from_phenomenon' appears is as a secondary phenomenon, ie _due_to_phenomenon1_from_phenomenon2, eg,
tendency_of_mass_fraction_of_stratiform_cloud_liquid_water_in_air_due_to_condensation_and_evaporation_from_convection
Would it be worth capturing this distinction between 'due_to' and 'from' in your lexicon?
2) Is it worth adding usage comments to the lexicon? For example, in the 'concentration' section you list both 'mole fraction of' and 'volume mixing ratio of'. These are often considered to be synonymous in the atmosphere, so someone just reading your lexicon might be unsure which to use. However, in CF practice, we have used 'volume mixing ratio of' exclusively for non-atmospheric quantities, and 'mole fraction of' for the atmosphere, which I think is for good, but subtle, reasons.
Best wishes,
Philip
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Philip Cameron-Smith Atmospheric, Earth, and Energy Division
pjc at llnl.gov Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
+1 925 4236634 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA94550, USA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu [mailto:cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gregory
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 9:56 AM
To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
Subject: [CF-metadata] standard name grammar
Dear all
Stimulated by Robert Muetzelfeldt's initiative to produce a grammar for CF
standard names based on the existing guidelines for construction of standard
names, I have done some work on deriving a comprehensive grammar of the
standard name table, described at
http://*www.*met.rdg.ac.uk/~jonathan/CF_metadata/13/standard_name_grammar.html
The grammar consists of a lexicon, which lists the phrases composing standard
names and assigns each one a phrasetype (scalar, medium, component, surface,
etc.), and a list of patterns which describe the syntax of standard names e.g.
tendency_of_atmosphere_water_vapor_content_due_to_advection
conforms to the pattern
(function_of) (layer) (scalar) due_to_(phenomenon)
In the web page I have described how I did the analysis. Attached to the web
page are the files which define the lexicon and the patterns for version 13 of
the standard name table (the present version), and two scripts for checking
and processing standard names using the grammar.
I don't know whether this will be useful, but I believe it could be. It ought
to make it easier to devise new names based on existing lexicon and syntax,
and to see how to extend the lexicon and syntax when necessary.
Cheers
Jonathan
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Received on Mon May 03 2010 - 18:00:02 BST
