# Title State the principles for design of the CF conventions # Moderator @davidhassell # Moderator Status Review [last updated: YY/MM/DD] Brief comment on current status, update periodically # Requirement Summary To state the principles which should be borne in mind when designing proposed changes to the CF convention. A brief statement of them was published by Hassell et al. (2017, 10.5194/gmd-10-4619-2017). # Technical Proposal Summary Add a statement of the principles near the start of the conventions document. # Benefits Proposers of enhancements to the convention will be made better aware. # Status Quo These principles have been applied throughout the history of CF and often mentioned in discussions, but have not been written down in the CF standard or elsewhere on the website up to now. # Detailed Proposal Insert a new section 1.2 in the conventions document, entitled "Principles for design of the CF conventions" (following section 1.1 on "Goals"), and renumber the following sections. The text of the proposed new section is:
The following principles are followed in the design of these conventions: * In order to make CF-netCDF files self-describing, no external resources are needed to interpret CF-netCDF metadata. * The conventions are changed only as actually required by common use-cases, and not for needs which cannot be anticipated with certainty. * The conventions should be practicable for both producers and users of data. * The metadata should be both easily readable by humans and easily parsable by programmes. * To avoid potential inconsistency, the conventions should minimise redundancy in the metadata. * The conventions should minimise the possibility for mistakes by data-writers and data-readers. * Conventions are provided to allow data-producers to describe the data they wish to produce, rather than attempting to prescribe what data they should produce. * Because many datasets remain in use for a long time after production, it is desirable that metadata written according to previous versions of the convention should also be compliant with and have the same interpretation under later versions. -- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/cf-convention/cf-conventions/issues/273 This list forwards relevant notifications from Github. It is distinct from [email protected], although if you do nothing, a subscription to the UCAR list will result in a subscription to this list. To unsubscribe from this list only, send a message to [email protected].
