Jonathan,

If that is OK within the convention, the only issue I see is that the convention states that names for area types *must* come from the area type table. That seems unnecessarily restrictive to me, and I'd encourage the deletion of the requirement. I know that more table entries can be requested easily enough, but there are so very many area types that I can imagine. Do we get enough benefit by "standardizing" them to offset the cost in time and trouble of the growth of yet another complex name hierarchy? (I know. Some people will say "Yes!" I just have to ask.)

Grace and peace,

Jim

On 9/23/2011 8:28 AM, Jonathan Gregory wrote:
Dear Jim and Thomas

It is fine to use flag_meanings to encode a string-valued field, as Jim
suggests. It's been suggested before in other contexts.  This is a kind of
data compression and I don't think a special standard name is needed for it.
It's still an area_type field.

Best wishes

Jonathan
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Jim Biard

Government Contractor, STG Inc.
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