On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 1:14 PM, John Caron <caron at unidata.ucar.edu> wrote:
>
> On 3/21/2013 11:17 AM, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Dave Allured - NOAA Affiliate
>> <dave.allured at noaa.gov> wrote:
>>
>>> You are making a set of technical
>>> use specifications, with significant departures from the reference
>>> standard ISO 8601.
>>
>>
>> If we do anything with this -- PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE simply use the
>> ISO standard! I"ve a bit lost track of where folks are proposing to
>> deviate, but what I have seen ( a different default time zone) seems
>> to be a case of "my particular application currently uses this
>> standard, so I want CF to match that", which is a really bad idea.
>>
>> If we really need to deviate, I'd say only do it by supporting a
>> subset of ISO (like requiring a TZ spec, for instance), but having the
>> exact same string mean something different in CF than ISO strikes me
>> as a really bad idea!
>
>
> Hi all:
>
> Ive always just worked with the "W3C profile of ISO8601"
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime
>
> So theres the question of supporting full ISO8601, or just a profile.
>
> In fact, I really just rely on specialized libraries to deal with the
> subtleties. Unidata is not very interested in spending resources on a
> problem that has already general solutions but is complex in the corners.
> Its mostly the non-standard calendars to support models that prevents
> adopting general libraries.
>
> If someone knows what the "departures from the reference standard ISO 8601"
> that CF has already made, please post.
>
> the only cases i know of where this might be true is:
>
> 1) default timezone
> 2) filling in non-specified fields with zeroes.
John,
My remark "significant departures from the reference standard ISO
8601" was not in reference to CF, as you implied above. It was
referring to Aleksandar's standard name proposal, specifically the
current version posted on January 11. This is a very limited subset
of all ISO 8601 syntax and functionality:
http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/pipermail/cf-metadata/2013/056085.html
In effect I am saying that if the intent of datetime_iso8601 is to
describe something other than the full ISO 8601 standard, then the
details need to be agreed on and formally recorded somewhere for CF
reference. Does that answer your question, or were you asking about
something else?
--Dave
Received on Thu Mar 21 2013 - 15:56:29 GMT
