Chris' suggestion is clearer and I think should be adopted. Draft text to support new atomic integer types in Section 2.2 is now:
"The netCDF data types char, byte, unsigned byte, short, unsigned short, int, unsigned int, int64, unsigned int64, float or real, and double are all acceptable. The char type is not intended for numeric data. One byte numeric data should be stored using the byte or unsigned byte data type. Unsigned types should be used for unsigned data if possible. If the underlying file format does not support unsigned types, byte, short, or int types can be treated as unsigned by using the NUG convention of indicating the unsigned range using the valid_min, valid_max, or valid_range attributes. The convention explicitly distinguishes between signed and unsigned integer types only where necessary. Unless otherwise noted, int is interchangeable with unsigned int, int64, and unsigned int64 in this convention, including examples and appendices. Similarly short is interchangable with unsigned short, and byte with unsigned byte." Some will wonder whether this sentence is redundant: "One byte numeric data should be stored using the byte or unsigned byte data type." It too is copied from CF 1.7, and I think its intent was to tell people to store 1-byte numeric data as type byte not type char. With that rationale, if the sentence was in 1.7 then it should probably be in 1.8, although I'll go with the consensus. -- Charlie Zender, Earth System Sci. & Computer Sci. University of California, Irvine 949-891-2429 )'( _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata