Dear all While I agree that "35246 hours since 1970-01-01" is not helpful to humans, I agree with Steve that we should not allow an alternative representation of time in CF, and that we should depend on software to do the encoding and decoding into more easily understable strings (just as we depend on software to read and write the binary files). Allowing a string representation would not avoid the complexity of calendars, which differ in regard to what dates are legal.
I agree with John that mistakes can easily be made, because this is a complex problem. Are there any other ways in which we could reduce the mistakes? For instance, would it be useful to take the simple step of providing various examples of encoded and decoded dates in various calendars, against which software could be checked? Best wishes Jonathan _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
