[CF-metadata] string valued coordinates

From: Schultz, Martin <m.schultz>
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2014 06:56:13 +0000

Dear Jonathan,

     Deprecating the units attribute for string and char variables (perhaps int, too?) sounds like a good idea. Yet, I would still second Marc to at least allow for a "None" value in the units attribute - as far as I understand this wouldn't break the compatibility.

    But, in my view even more important, is the issue of making the units attribute mandatory in CF-2. We had this discussion earlier, and I sensed some support for the general idea of "cleaning" CF in the sense that our applications can rely on certain things to be there, because this clearly enhances the resilience of interoperable systems. If people submit their test files to a CF check and get a message back that they are supposed to add a units attribute, they may do so. If the CF checker doesn't tell them this (because it is valid CF to have variables without a units attribute), then they will most certainly not do so. Of course, in light of the new discussion, we would have to carefully draft the rules for when the units attribute is indeed mandatory.

Best regards,

Martin

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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2014 17:38:38 +0000
From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk>
To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
Subject: [CF-metadata] string valued coordinates
Message-ID: <20141106173838.GA9649 at met.reading.ac.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

One further thought: we could deprecate the units attribute for variables of string and char type, or having a flag_values att. These conditions can be detected automatically, so the CF_checker would give a warning, for instance.
Jonathan

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Received on Thu Nov 06 2014 - 23:56:13 GMT