UTF-8 is not a character set, it is an encoding for unicode, how you actually store these names in the files is specified by the [CDM Identifiers section](https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf-java/v4.3/CDM/Identifiers.html) and cannot be decided by CF.
Since CF doesn't [support string attributes yet](https://github.com/cf-convention/cf-conventions/issues/141) and given how some libraries interact with string attributes (e.g. netcdf4 python will [force a string attribute](https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf4-python/pull/533) if the text attribute cannot be converted to ASCII). The implicit and in practice restriction is that variable names are restricted to unicode points lower than U+007F (i.e. ASCII) if their name is going to appear in a CF standardized attribute. I think CF should only go so far as to warn about this limitation for names which will appear in these attributes, but not care beyond that. -- 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/307#issuecomment-728179097 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].
