Charlie, I'm in general agreement with your proposal. I've got a question.
In the case where the new scheme replaces an old scheme, how should we handle it in the documentation? In the old Section 2.2, the basic gist (although curiously limited to 1-byte unsigned integers) is that you represent fill, max, and min using their signed equivalents (the same bit pattern expressed as a signed value). Once you adopt unsigned types, this approach is unnecessary and mentioning it is confusing. Do we continue to talk about the old method, or let the older versions of the Conventions carry the load? Grace and peace, Jim ================== The current CF 1.8 draft reads (Section 2.2): "The netCDF data types char, byte, short, int, float or real, and double are all acceptable. The char type is not intended for numeric data. One byte numeric data should be stored using the byte data type. All integer types are treated by the netCDF interface as signed. It is possible to treat the byte type as unsigned by using the NUG convention of indicating the unsigned range using the valid_min, valid_max, or valid_range attributes." [image: CICS-NC] <http://www.cicsnc.org/>Visit us on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/cicsnc> *Jim Biard* *Research Scholar* Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites NC <http://cicsnc.org/> North Carolina State University <http://ncsu.edu/> NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information <http://ncdc.noaa.gov/> *formerly NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center* 151 Patton Ave, Asheville, NC 28801 e: [email protected] o: +1 828 271 4900 *Connect with us on Facebook for climate <http://www.facebook.com/NOAANCEIclimate> and ocean and geophysics <http://www.facebook.com/NOAANCEIoceangeo> information, and follow us on Twitter at @NOAANCEIclimate <http://www.twitter.com/NOAANCEIclimate>and @NOAANCEIocngeo <http://www.twitter.com/NOAANCEIocngeo>.*
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