Hi Chris, There are two philosophies.
1) Create an idealised model with everything normalised and harmonised to the nth degree, declare it as a standard and force everybody to conform. 2) Accept community practice but make sure that everything is unambiguously described. Interoperability then comes through the development of semantic resources describing the relationships between the descriptions. More years of experience than I like to admit is bringing me kicking and screaming from camp (1) to camp (2). Although the transform from 'sea_binary_mask' to 'land_binary_mask' may be straightforward, the logistics of the conversion is not. I therefore share Jonathan's view that accepting Rick's suggestion is the best course of action. Cheers, Roy. ________________________________________ From: cf-metadata-boun...@cgd.ucar.edu [cf-metadata-boun...@cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of Christopher Barker [chris.bar...@noaa.gov] Sent: 03 January 2011 17:57 To: Rich Signell; cf-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] Request for standard_name="sea_binary_mask" On 1/2/11 6:11 PM, Rich Signell wrote: > But they are not the same thing. They are the inverse. yes, of course, but they carry exactly the same information, do they not? Why have two ways to express the same information? > Yes, it would > be possible to have data sets providers create NcML for every ROMS > dataset that has ever been written and serve the data with a > land_binary_mask instead of a sea_binary_mask. well, I suppose it may be a question of whether there are more data providers or data consumers... That also implies that there are a bunch of ROMS-output netcdf files that already have a sea_binary_mask variable, and are therefor not currently CF-compliant. Is that the case? Do we want to add things to the standard to make common, but not compliant, use cases compliant? Perhaps so. > But probably easier > to have developers add 10 lines to your code to handle this, IMHO. well, on the writing the file end, it's not even one line, it's a couple of characters (or however you spell "not" in your language of choice): land_binary_mask_variable = ~ sea_binary_mask # in Python/numpy But if there are two names for the same information, reading code needs to look for both of those names, which is more code, more logic and more room for errors/missing features. And multiply that by every logical variable one might want to express both ways. Anyway, I'm new to the CF standards discussion -- if there is precedent for this kind of thing, go for it. -Chris > -Rich > > On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 12:31 PM, Chris Barker<chris.bar...@noaa.gov> wrote: >> On 12/30/2010 2:40 PM, Rich Signell wrote: >>> >>> CF Standard Name Team: >>> >>> I would like to request a new standard_name="sea_binary_mask" defined as >>> >>> sea_binary_mask X_binary_mask has 1 where condition X is met, 0 >>> elsewhere. 1 = sea, 0 = land. >>> >>> This is used by the popular ROMS ocean model, and perhaps others. >>> >>> The new "sea_binary_mask" would join the existing "land_binary_mask", >>> which has 1 = land, 0 = sea. >>> >> >> which makes it completely redundant. How hard it is to translate a >> sea_binary_mask into a land_binary mask? >> >> as an end user, now all my code has to look for both, despite them being the >> same thing. >> >> Isn't it an ideal to have only one standard way to express a given quantity? >> >> -Chris >> >> > > > -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception chris.bar...@noaa.gov _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata-- This message (and any attachments) is for the recipient only NERC is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the contents of this email and any reply you make may be disclosed by NERC unless it is exempt from release under the Act. Any material supplied to NERC may be stored in an electronic records management system. _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata