#159: charset attribute
-----------------------------+------------------------------
Reporter: bob.simons | Owner: cf-conventions@…
Type: enhancement | Status: new
Priority: medium | Milestone:
Component: cf-conventions | Version:
Resolution: | Keywords:
-----------------------------+------------------------------
Comment (by jonathan):
Dear Bob et al.
I think _Encoding is good. I've just consulted the netCDF user guide, and
I see they don't include _Encoding as one of their attribute conventions
there. Yet the use of the underscore should imply it means something
special to the netCDF library, according to their conventions (like
_FillValue). Does it have a function in Unidata software?
I see you've combined your two tickets, and the choice between charset or
_Encoding indicates whether it's char or string data. I'm not convinced
still that we need this distinction. On the email list we are discussing
Example H4. To my mind this example shows that there is a problem with the
convention as it stands - and thanks for drawing attention to it. But
supposing it's legal, so that the cf_role variable identifies a single
timeseries location to which the file refers, there is then no ambiguity,
is there? Would you use an array of chars (rather than a string) to
identify a timeseries location? If you did, what is really the difference
of meaning between a single 1D char array and a single string? They're
practically equivalent, I would have thought. Are there any other cases
where CF is ambiguous about whether a variable is a char array or a
string?
Best wishes and thanks
Jonathan
--
Ticket URL: <http://cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov/trac/ticket/159#comment:6>
CF Metadata <http://cf-convention.github.io/>
CF Metadata
