CF does support using ASCII strings for enumerated lists of named
objects: PI name, ship names, species names, etc. An important
encoding ability. That capability is not in question.
- Steve
On 3/28/2013 9:36 AM, John Graybeal wrote:
On Mar 28, 2013, at 17:54, Steve Hankin <steven.c.han...@noaa.gov
<mailto:steven.c.han...@noaa.gov>> wrote:
netCDF files are in every sense "binary" files. They cannot be read
except by custom-built utilities. (Or is there a constituency that
wants to access CF using the unix "strings" command?) In all cases
except the present discussion, it is the job of those custom-built
utilities to generate formatted string representations of the
information contained in the CF binary encoded variables.
The entire current discussion would not be happening, if the
custom-built utilities and standard code libraries supported the
ability to get time information into and out of our binary files
using formatted ISO 8601 strings.
This is arguably not true. I gave two use cases, one was the derided
equivalent of your Unix strings command (call me crazy, it fits in
this case!); the other was the desire to store an ASCII string of
particular structure and meaning into the binary netCDF file, and then
to label the information in that binary file with what it is. No more,
and no less. (Uh, unless I think of another use case. :->)
Seriously, I think some use cases, partly including my first one, go
directly to your point -- "my tool can't print this timestamp as ISO
8601 so I'm going to duplicate the data as ASCII, in that ISO format,
as a workaround" -- but the second one remains a real use case
regardless of existing tool support for representations. And it goes
beyond time, now that we're on this topic.
The fact that most use netCDF as a strict binary encoding does not
mean it must exclude those who want to use it to store ASCII strings.
That is perhaps the key criterion -- the community can say "No ASCII
string representations of anything!", or "No standard names for ASCII
strings", if either is a constraint they really want.
So, for those who want to be able to store strings, however different
that may sound, and then label them with standard names when that's
appropriate -- is the tent open to that? Nothing in the standard
suggested to me it was not, though it often seems to offend
practitioners, so maybe I've missed something.
John
---------------
John Graybeal
Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org
grayb...@marinemetadata.org <mailto:grayb...@marinemetadata.org>
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