Dear Karl Thanks. I have reformulated principle (1), combining yours and mine, and stating the purpose at the start. I think "self-describing" means not using anything outside the file itself, which is stronger than what you suggested. Is this OK?
In response to your first additional point, I've appended a bit to principle (8). Thanks for your second additional point, which is important. I have inserted principle (3) about this. Finally, I have added principle (10), which is partly a corollary of (9), and partly something we've done for its own sake, often advocated by Steve Hankin. Thus, here is the current proposal: (1) CF-netCDF metadata is designed to make each dataset self-describing, meaning that it should be interpretable without reference to resources outside itself. To achieve this purpose, CF-netCDF does not use codes, but instead relies on controlled vocabularies containing terms that are chosen as far as practically possible to be self-explanatory (and whose precise definitions are provided in CF documents). (2) The conventions are changed only as actually required by common use-cases, and not for needs which cannot be anticipated with certainty. (3) [New] In order to keep them logical, consistent in approach and as simple as possible, the netCDF conventions are devised with and within the conceptual framework of the CF data model. (4) The conventions should be practicable for both producers and users of data. (5) The metadata should be both easily readable by humans and easily parsable by programs. (6) [Slightly reordered] To avoid potential inconsistency within the metadata, the conventions should minimise redundancy. (7) The conventions should minimise the possibility for mistakes by data-writers and data-readers. (8) 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; [new] consequently most CF conventions are optional. (9) 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. (10) [New] Because all previous versions must generally continue to be supported in software for the sake of archived datasets, and in order to limit the complexity of the conventions, there is a strong preference against introducing any new capability to the conventions when there is already some method that can adequately serve the same purpose (even if a different method would arguably be better than the existing one). Cheers Jonathan -- 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#issuecomment-649396973 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].
