[Esip-documentation] ACDD-1.3 documentation change request: Descriptions of "resolution" attributes

[David Neufeld - NOAA Affiliate]

John,

Good point, the constraint is not declared, but was inferred during ncISO
development.  Note, ncISO provides a calculated value for resolution when a
dataset is CF compliant.

Dave

Thanks for weighing in David. Your rewording satisfies one issue, but
leaves a question.

Referencing the line above: I can't find this constraint declared anywhere
previously. Is there a specific basis for it? (Perhaps that the name of the
attribute implies the units have to be georectified?)  Otherwise I would
expect to support equidistant units also, since that's the organization of
many observing grids.




On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 5:13 PM, John Graybeal via Esip-documentation <
esip-documentation at lists.esipfed.org> wrote:

> On Feb 25, 2015, at 12:29, Aaron Sweeney <aaron.sweeney at noaa.gov> wrote:
>
> Why are these attributes not called
> "geospatial_[lat|lon|vertical]_spacing", rather than
> "geospatial_[lat|lon|vertical]_resolution", if, in fact, the intention, as
> indicated in their Descriptions, is to capture the "targeted spacing of
> points"?
>
>
> Short answer: For historical reasons (the earlier ACDD versions used
> 'resolution', and as Bob said, changing names is tough).  Going back, this
> was the term used by ISO, and it is (in this context) a description of the
> grid, rather than the measurements. While I totally agree with you on the
> word choice, ISO has a lot of international participants, and (judging from
> their code lists) may see extensive arguments about word selections as
> futile.
>
> On Feb 25, 2015, at 13:07, Bob Simons - NOAA Federal via
> Esip-documentation <esip-documentation at lists.esipfed.org> wrote:
>
> That's why we try very hard not to make changes to successive versions of
> ACDD (and other standards) that conflict with previous versions.
>
>
> To be fair, we had long exchanges about this when working on ACDD 1.3. A
> few of us believe strongly that a new version might need to break practices
> in a previous version, and that this does not represent a conflict (because
> no one *has* to use the new version). In the case of ACDD 1.3, we conceded
> the point, ironically enough because this argument lost the day:
>
> Software (like ncISO, THREDDS, ERDDAP) is written to work according to the
> standard, not the other way around
>
>
> For ACDD 1.3, the argument was put forward that a lot of work went into
> existing software and data sets, and we shouldn't have to make people
> change their programs and their data to match the new standard. Of course
> they wouldn't have to change their data (existing data could still follow
> 1.1), but we still didn't want to make this update break existing software.
> (Although, arguably it does.)
>
> On Feb 25, 2015, at 13:02, David Neufeld - NOAA Affiliate <
> david.neufeld at noaa.gov> wrote:
>
>  the resolution will always refer to units of the axis.
>
>
> Thanks for weighing in David. Your rewording satisfies one issue, but
> leaves a question.
>
> Referencing the line above: I can't find this constraint declared anywhere
> previously. Is there a specific basis for it? (Perhaps that the name of the
> attribute implies the units have to be georectified?)  Otherwise I would
> expect to support equidistant units also, since that's the organization of
> many observing grids.
>
> John
>
>
>
> On Feb 25, 2015, at 13:02, David Neufeld - NOAA Affiliate <
> david.neufeld at noaa.gov> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I  recommend the examples for all resolutions be updated to drop embedded
> units, because the resolution will always refer to units of the axis.
>
> In other words the units are already described by the following
> attributes: geospatial_lat_units, geospatial_lon_units,
> geospatial_vertical_units.
>
> Duplicating units as an embedded value might minimally result in
> inconsistencies in the documentation.
>
> The description could be revised along the lines of:
> From version 1.3 - Information about the targeted vertical spacing of
> points. Example: '25 meters'
> To version 1.3.1 - Information about the targeted vertical spacing of
> points, units are referenced by the global attribute
> geospatial_vertical_units. Example: '25'
>
> Dave
>
>
>
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