On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 4:57 PM, John Caron <caron at unidata.ucar.edu> wrote:
> The current proposal(s) would not change files that are written with
> :Conventions="CF-1.x", where x <= 6. Files with x > 6 could still use the
> (ill-advised) old way if they want to, by putting an explicit calendar
> attribute in. But if theres no explicit calendar attribute, then these new
> files will be interpreted in a way that is less likely to give incorrect
> dates.
>
> So, im not sure why you keep saying "shouldn't break current files", since
> there is no such proposal on the table.
The trick is that I suspect a lot of client software may not check CF
version carefully, or at all, or with a version>=something check. I
know that I"ve never thought about calendars, but then again, I don't
think I've even seen a "since 1-1-1" file either -- that does seem an
odd choice!
>> But anyway, I wonder if folks currently using such files are actually
>> getting the "correct" results, when they do.
> those using udunits get the correct result even when they cross the line. i suspect its correct > because using a different implementation (joda time library) gets the same results for the
> small sample i have tested.
Good to know -- though strictly speaking, you need to not only use
udunits, but use it correctly -- i.e. with the right calendar. Anyway,
I was suggesting that there may be a lot of mis-use of the current
default anyway -- I have no idea what folks are using for clients. If
there are a lot of clients that don't currently "do the right thing",
then maybe we can be less concerned about "breakage".
-Chris
--
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer
Emergency Response Division
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Chris.Barker at noaa.gov
Received on Tue Dec 18 2012 - 09:53:13 GMT
