> Tim Holt has made numerous comments about the "conventions.info" and
> the brief variable names used (like T, Tmin, etc.). Personally, I
> think the variable names should be short and that extra information be
> put into attributes. I like the idea of naming variables the same way
> they are used in the dynamics equations, or using well known acronyms.
> Nothing will frustrate a programmer more that having to type
> unnecessarily long names that add little to the understanding of what
> the variable is. And if you are trying to deal with netCDF files in a
> generic way, you can grab temperature without worrying about whether
> it is "temperature_from_ship_type_457b2" or
> "temperature_from_groundstation", you just grab "T".
>
> Information on how the data was derived, limitations, etc., more
> naturally belong in an attribute than in a variable name. Certainly
> it is important information to keep with the data, but the variable
> name is the wrong place for it.
I feel both side right, let' make a compromise. In addition, let's
consider a rather technical aspect: Partial or whole content of NetCDF
files are often post-processed in environments like IDL where we would
like to use the same variable names as in the imported NetCDF files.
Unfortunately, environments often impose a limit on the length of
varaiable names. And what is worse, the compiler may truncate the
names by itself: over a certain limit limit variable names will not be
distinguishable for the compiler. Therefore, the user himself/herself
must truncate the long variable names before the compiler would do so.
The user must set up a "home-convention" which may or not follow the
convention we have been coming up here. On the other hand, I would
like to avoid short abbreviated names like we use in fortran
subroutine libraries (brrr, it is cool even think of it). I know, all
this dos not affect the generality and content of information captured
INSIDE NetCDF files, however, it may turn out to be inconvenient. (At
least, it already did for me.) I would like to see not-too-long names,
that are nicely readable, informative, and not too long for the most
programming environments.
Gabor Fichtinger
Scientific Visualization Group, |campus: BRC.CMS.1-154, 78700
Center for High Performance Computing |email : gabor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The University of Texas System |Ph/1 : (512) 471 2409
Balcones Research Center, 1.154 CMS |Ph/2 : 1-800-262-2472/2409
10100 Burnet Road, Austin, TX,78758-4497|Fax : (512) 471 2445
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