[Esip-documentation] Minutes / handling of ACDD guidance

Fri Feb 27 15:28:32 EST 2015

Yes, I was suggesting guidance for 1.3, as that is what people are asking for guidance on.

I never said 'changes' and I didn't mean changes, so I think that's a red herring. The guidance can't override what is in the spec. Nor can it require anything.

And IMHO we provide guidance anyway, we just do it in a series of lengthy discussions that don't get summarized anywhere, and therefore are essentially useless to the next person with a question.

John

On Feb 27, 2015, at 12:05, Bob Simons - NOAA Federal via Esip-documentation <esip-documentation at lists.esipfed.org> wrote:

> I'm not sure if you are suggesting "guidance" icons and guidance text
> for ACDD 1.3.  If so, I think it is a very bad idea. It sounds
> reasonable, but I think it will effectively become a source of
> unofficial, frequently changing, not voted upon, de facto changes to
> the ACDD 1.3 standard.  If we're going to make changes (such as the
> currently suggested changes to geospatial_lat/lon_resolution), then
> let's start a changes list for a proposed ACDD 1.4.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 11:54 AM, John Graybeal via Esip-documentation
> <esip-documentation at lists.esipfed.org> wrote:
>> I'm not sure what it means to say "the ACDD documentation would be amended",
>> or whether that's a final decision. But I have a proposal intended to
>> address this question, and avoid other process debates peeking their heads
>> up....
>> 
>> As this thread every so often gets questions about the meaning/application
>> of ACDD, indicating the specification is being actively used (yay) and not
>> every answer is self-explanatory (shocking :->).  I propose we create a an
>> ACDD guidance page, which could briefly explain best practices and
>> understandings as they are derived in the emails.
>> 
>> In the present example, the page could include the facts that:
>> * the lat/lon/vertical resolution variables only should be used if there is
>> a grid of observations in that axis
>> * tools typically construe a value without units to be the same units as the
>> units given by geospatial_lat/lon/vertical_units
>> * values following the form "number units" should use UDUNITS-compatible
>> units if they are to be understood by tools,
>> and possibly, depending on how the conversation unfolds,
>> * lat/lon resolutions should only be given for georectified grids (list of
>> acceptable georectified units would be helpful here).
>> 
>> (If the idea that resolution attributes should not include units takes hold,
>> that would require an update to the spec. We don't seem to be heading that
>> direction though.)
>> 
>> Perhaps we could even agree that a small help icon in the main document's
>> attributes table could be added whenever a guidance topic is added, without
>> changing the ACDD specification version.
>> 
>> Thoughts?
>> 
>> John
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 26, 2015, at 11:37, Ted Habermann via Esip-documentation
>> <esip-documentation at lists.esipfed.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello all,
>> 
>> These are the minutes for today's meeting. I will get them on the
>> Wiki/commons ASAP...
>> 
>> Ted
>> 
>> Documentation Cluster Minutes - February 2015
>> 
>> The Documentation cluster meeting was delayed a week then held two hours
>> early (sorry about the confusion caused by Ted).
>> Nevertheless, we had an interesting discussion.
>> 
>> 1. Resolution and units
>> There was a long email thread yesterday started by Aaron Sweeny about how
>> horizontal resolutions were described in netCDF and in the ACDD
>> documentation. There was confusion caused by the recommendation that
>> resolution strings in ACDD have the form “number units”. The current
>> transform translates this into invalid ISO because the ISO value includes
>> the entire string and it is expected to be a numeric value (needs to be
>> checked). There is also a situation in an NODC template where, for point
>> data, the resolution is recommended to be the string “point”. This also
>> causes problems related to the type of the result in ISO.
>> 
>> It was decided that the ACDD documentation would be amended to include that
>> fact that, if the resolution is given without units, it is assumed to be the
>> same as the unit given by geospatial_lat/lon_units.
>> 
>> 2. A way forward
>> 
>> Aaron is also interested in how Sea Data Net attributes can be translated
>> from netCDF to ISO. The only recommendation for a way forward involved
>> branching the ncISO xsl (in gitHub at
>> https://github.com/Unidata/threddsIso/tree/master/src/main/resources/xsl/nciso)
>> to include those attributes as input. This branch could then be described on
>> the ACDD pages in the ESIP wiki. The SeaDataNet metadata page is at
>> http://www.seadatanet.org/Standards-Software/Metadata-formats.
>> 
>> 3. Metadata Recommendations and Dialects
>> 
>> Ted reported briefly on the work he has been doing with tools for comparing
>> metadata recommendations and dialects. Early versions of these tools are at:
>> 
>> http://ec2-54-149-127-50.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com:443/drTool/
>> 
>> http://ec2-54-149-127-50.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com:443/recTool/ and
>> 
>> http://ec2-54-149-127-50.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com:443/dialectTool/
>> 
>> Maybe next month we will have more time for a complete description of this
>> work...
>> 
>> 4. Linked Data Dataset Description
>> 
>> Ted reported on some recent metadata developments in the W3C Health Care and
>> Life Sciences Working Group. This group is working on a profile for dataset
>> descriptions that brings together many commonly used linked data namespaces.
>> The Editors Working Draft of this profile is at
>> http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/hcls/notes/hcls-dataset/. Ted is working on
>> crosswalks from that profile to metadata dialects that are commonly used in
>> the Earth sciences.
>> 
>> <SignatureSm.png>
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Bob Simons
> IT Specialist
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