Dear John, Seth and all. ----- Forwarded message from John Graybeal <[email protected]> -----
> On Jan 27, 2015, at 08:31, Jonathan Gregory <[email protected]> wrote: > > ...all changes ever since the first version are still shown as provisional > > because we have no rule for accepting them as permanent > > This seems at odds with Seth's observations about when changes appear to go > away (with each new release). I haven't checked what the documents show, but the intention is that all changes should still be provisional. I think that's Jeff's understanding too. > I'm pretty sure the intent was also to validate the changes -- i.e., that > they were not considered fully approved until they had been around long > enough to inspire confidence based on use. That's right. The rules say that two applications must have demonstrated that they work. See http://cfconventions.org/rules.html. However we have never organised this process so it's never happened. I agree that's unsatisfactory. Although this thread is about document markup, it's a good time to review the rules in this regard. In fact I think we discussed it before, a few months ago. During the whole time CF has existed, we have never needed to reverse a change because it turned out to be erroneous or problematic. I suppose this is because we are always thorough in agreeing them in the first place. However it is still sensible to have some provisional period, just in case, and perhaps we can presume that if there is a problem, someone will raise it, rather than having to set in place a verification process. I presume we should stick to releases of the doc. We could update it continually with trac tickets but I think that would be more difficult for users of the convention to keep track of. Bearing all that in mind, my initial suggestion would be that a change is marked as provisional in the version in which it is first made and any subsequent versions which are released less than a year after the change is first made. This will mean checking the history to see which provisional changes become permanent whenever a new version is compiled, and that's a bit of work. Since it's more than a year since we last had a new version, that would means all changes that have previously been made would be permanent in 1.7. The only provisional changes would be those newly made in 1.7. Changing the rules is something that the conventions committee would have to decide about, but it'd be good if we can agree something on this email list. What do you think? Best wishes Jonathan _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
