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#101: Correct error in introductory text of Section 4.4 -- definition of 'year'
-----------------------------+----------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  stevehankin     |       Owner:  [email protected]
      Type:  defect          |      Status:  new                          
  Priority:  medium          |   Milestone:                               
 Component:  cf-conventions  |     Version:                               
Resolution:                  |    Keywords:                               
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Comment (by jonathan):

 Dear Steve

 Sorry to be awkward, but I don't think we can do that. CF adopted udunits
 as the arbiter of how units should be interpreted, and redefining the unit
 of `year` would therefore be a backward-incompatible change. It would
 affect existing files if it was interpreted as applying retrospectively,
 even if that was not the intention.

 In CF section 4.4 we currently recommend that caution is necessary with
 the units of `year` and `month`, because of the definition, which catches
 people out. I'd like to suggest that we change this recommendation to a
 '''prohibition''' of the units of `year` and `month` in the next version
 of CF. The CF checker could detect that, and we could remove these units
 from a CF version of the udunits database.

 For uses where `year` and `month` are to be interpreted in a calendar-
 dependent way, we could introduce an alternative syntax for units of time,
 not related to udunits. John Caron suggested one a while ago, and has
 implemented it in Java I think, but it's not been put forward as a CF
 convention. This involves some extra rules e.g. to decide what is meant by
 31 Jan 2013 plus 1 calendar month, or 29 Feb 2012 plus 1 calendar year.

 Neither of the above could be done as a defect ticket, because they change
 the convention. If you or others think we should proceed with this, we
 could change the status of this ticket to make a new proposal, or start a
 new ticket.

 Cheers

 Jonathan

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov/trac/ticket/101#comment:5>
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