Dear Jim > I think the point of CF 2.x would be to openly embrace new netCDF > features, and if strong backward compatibility would make it > awkward, then backward compatibility would lose. CF 1.x could > continue to evolve along side it. CF 2.x would be a refactoring that > took new features and lessons learned into account.
I don't think that would be a good idea, myself. It would increase (by maybe a factor of two) the amount of work required to maintain CF, and it would cause a lot of debates about which changes should be made in both, etc. I think if we step to CF-2.x then the final CF-1.x should be the end of that line. I am not completely opposed to backward incompatibility, as I said before. I just think that there has to be a very strong case for it. A complete refactoring, starting all over again and repeating the discussions of the last 15 years, would be a tremendous amount of work and I don't see a good reason for it. I think we have to keep in mind that a convention, such as CF, is at some level arbitrary. We make the best decisions we can at the time, and I would rather spend time extending CF to new purposes than revisiting old decisions, even though in many cases a different decision could have been made, unless the old decision has truly proved itself to be a nuisance. But backward- incompatible changes that materially improve the usefulness of the standard should be considered, I agree. Best wishes Jonathan _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
