thanks @JonathanGregory: that is better.

Final note on "axis" -- I think I'm being pedantic here, and it's probably bad 
to introduce new terms, but:

David wrote:

> A "discrete axis" in CF is one which does not correspond to a continuous 
> physical quantity, for example, this is the case for an axis that runs over 
> ocean basins or area types, or for a domain axis that indexes a time series 
> at scattered points. This also applies to the axis that stores the nodes of a 
> UGRID mesh.

Does it though?

> In many of these cases the discrete axis is sampling a higher dimensional 
> space, as you say. This where the "discrete sampling geometries" of chapter 9 
> get their name (I always imagine a ship sailing along a sinuous course and 
> recording SSTs at various time intervals). A domain that has such a discrete 
> domain axis construct can also have other domain axis constructs (such as 
> ones for time, level, etc.) which are indeed orthogonal to each other and to 
> the discrete axis.

In all of these examples, the axis may be "wandering around" in a higher 
dimensional space, but as noted, they are still orthogonal to others, and more 
critically, they represent a continuum of some sort. That is, where along the 
axis they lie is meaningful -- the fact that a value comes before or after 
another value, or is "next to" a value is meaningful. 

But in the case of a unstructured grid's node array, for instance, the order in 
which the node coordinates are in the array is completely (well, not 
completely, but ...) arbitrary. It is a mapping between a node index and the 
coordinates of that node, nothing more -- it could be completely re-ordered 
without its meaning changing. Which is why I don't think of it as an axis, even 
if it technically fits the definition.

But as I said, probably good enough, and I can't think of a better term.





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