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 <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: [CF-metadata] string valued coordinates
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
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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