The standard way CF deals with time is one of its most attractive
features; time is most difficult thing to understand in a 'generic'
NetCDF file.
My concern is that - as John G and at least 1 other person on this
thread have indicated - the addition of ISO string times is just the
beginning of an alternate method of representing the time coordinate
variable. Once it's a standard name, despite the fine print, we'll be
seeing files labeled as CF compliant that have ISO strings for the
time coordinate.
I still don't think we have a valid use case that shows a need for this
standard name *as it has been proposed*, and we don't seem to have
consensus on the time zone issue, either, as far as I have read.
Although lots of standard names are added that I don't need, I certainly
don't object to them - the more kinds of data that CF can describe, the
better. Providing an alternate description of time is a completely
different
case, IMHO; it could fundamentally change CF.
> Like any other standard name, don't use it if you don't need/like
> it.
>
> -Aleksandar
Nan
PS: re John G's use cases
#1: unless your instrument produces NetCDF, you need to use the
library anyway, so generating time is not a problem (and you can
still stash the instrument's time string without a standard name)
#2: you don't need to find the holy grail, you just need ncdump -T
--
*******************************************************
* Nan Galbraith Information Systems Specialist *
* Upper Ocean Processes Group Mail Stop 29 *
* Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution *
* Woods Hole, MA 02543 (508) 289-2444 *
*******************************************************
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