Re: CDC netCDF and netCDF WWW

> Organization: NOAA/CDC
> Keywords: 199411081855.AA21780 netCDF conventions

Hi Julia,

> I believe Susan Lynds here at CDC previously talked to you about
> adding our netCDF-related activities to the Unidata netCDF WWW pages.
> Susan has left CDC for the greener pastures of graduate school :-),
> and I'm trying to follow up on her work. I'd like to add an entry 
> for CDC to the WWW page "Where is NetCDF Used?"
> (http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/usage.html).  This seems
> like a good place to include a link to our conventions.

Yes, that would be great.  Just send me the text and I'll add it in.  Then
let me know if you have any changes.

>                                                          Additionally,
> we're trying to write up some conventions for spectral data (our current
> conventions just accomodate gridded data).  Is there a page somewhere
> that just links to various conventions that netCDF users have adopted?

There is a directory of conventions documents for various groups, in

    ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/Conventions

I have been giving groups who want to make their conventions available an
convention documents on ftp.unidata.ucar.edu and refer to them via a
global "Conventions" attribute if they want to declare that specific files
conform to a given set of documented conventions.  Here's how this is now
documented in the "Attribute Conventions" section of the netCDF User's Guide:

Conventions 
     If present, `Conventions' is a global attribute that is a character
     array for the name of the conventions followed by the file, in the form
     of a string that is interpreted as a directory name relative to a
     directory that is a repository of documents describing sets of
     discipline-specific conventions. This permits a hierarchical structure
     for conventions and provides a place where descriptions and examples of
     the conventions may be maintained by the defining institutions and
     groups. The conventions path name is currently interpreted relative to
     the directory pub/netcdf/Conventions/ on the host machine
     ftp.unidata.ucar.edu.

     For example, if a group named NUWG agrees upon a set of conventions for
     dimension names, variable names, required attributes, and netCDF
     representations for certain discipline-specific data structures, they
     may store a document describing the agreed-upon conventions in a file
     in the NUWG/ subdirectory of the Conventions directory, and files that
     followed these conventions would contain a global Conventions attribute
     with value "NUWG".

     Later, if the group agrees upon some additional conventions for a
     specific subset of NUWG data, for example time series data, the
     description of the additional conventions might be stored in the
     NUWG/Time_series/ subdirectory, and files that adhered to these
     additional conventions would use the global Conventions attribute with
     value "NUWG/Time_series", implying that this file adheres to the NUWG
     conventions and also to the additional NUWG time-series conventions.

> Or is the page I reference above the best place to include this link?
> Not only would we like to advertise our conventions, we'd like to
> make sure we're not reinventing the netCDF wheel.   

You can certainly feel free to store HTML documents in our Conventions/
directory and provide links to them from other documents, or use links to
conventions maintained on your own server instead if that's more convenient.
I think it might be best to include a small HTML file on our FTP server
(perhaps under pub/netcdf/Conventions/CDC/index.html) that contains links to WWW
documents on one of your WWW servers where the bulk of the conventions
documents would be maintained.  That way others would know you have
conventions that they could browse, but you would only have to maintain one
document here that pointed to your other conventions documents.

I think your idea of having a link to existing netCDF conventions form the
netCDF Home Page is a good one, and I've added a simple FTP link to the
directory.  Later I'll create an HTML document for conventions instead.

I should also add a "What's New" link when I get time, to make it easier to
find out if anything has been changed recently.

subdirectory of our Conventions directory and adding documents to it in a
follow-up message.

> Also, I hope to have CRDtools (our local software) in good shape by
> December so we could add it to the Unidata "List of Software" that
> uses netCDF (http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/utilities.html).
> If all of this sounds acceptable to you, let me know where I can
> send the appropriate HTML text.

That sounds great.  Just send it to me when it's ready, and I'll edit it
into the document and get your approval.

--Russ