Dear Philip and John I agree with what Philip says here:
> We could then tweak our current practice on this mailing list so that when a > person proposes a std_name they should state (or perhaps there is a little > bit of code to check) that the proposed std_name conforms to the existing > grammar and vocabulary rules. I think most of us would then provide only > cursory scrutiny. Perhaps there could even be an automatic timer so that if > nobody objects within some time period (perhaps 1 month) then the name is > automatically accepted. Essentially the default decision for conforming > names would be 'acceptance'. I think this would also make the generation of > the text descriptions either automatic, or perhaps obsolete, in many cases > because they could be inferred from the grammar and vocabulary tables. I could bring the grammar up to date as a starting point. I agree that it would be possible to work out text corresponding to each phrase and thus construct definitions, or at least a first draft of them. Units could also be deduced automatically. I don't myself have the expertise or the time to write scripts in support of this, to make it easy for proposers to use these procedures e.g. on the web. John writes: > But where we are talking about adding generic modifiers, it seems to me a > more automated approach is possible. If the meaning of the modifier is > clear, then no matter what name it is applied to, the meaning of the > resulting compound should be clear. If that is the case, then adding that > modifier to an existing name should be verifiable mechanically. If this refers to the standard_name modifiers, which are separate words appended to standard names, then in fact no approval is needed. It is fine to add these to the standard_name attribute. That is not regarded as creating a new standard_name. In fact the modifiers were introduced to avoid having to add such names to the table. Best wishes Jonathan _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
