Re: 980616: netCDF Frequently Asked Questions

>To: "'address@hidden'" <address@hidden>
>From: Tina Navarro <address@hidden>
>Subject: netCDF Frequently Asked Questions
>Organization: .
>Keywords: 199806162002.OAA13925

Hi Tina,

> I was reading your FAQ sheet on netCDF.  There were a couple of acronyms
> used which I didn't know.  Could you define them for me -- CDL and XDR?

Sure.  We made up CDL (network Common Data form Language) to refer to
our textual representation of a netCDF binary dataset.  You can read
more about it or see an example in the NetCDF User's Guide for C, at

   http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/guidec/guidec-7.html#HEADING7-6

CDL is a convenient notation to use for describing the structure of
netCDF data, and a couple of simple netCDF utilities (ncdump and ncgen)
allow you to use CDL to create or edit netCDF data.

XDR is

   ... a standard for the description and encoding of data.  It is
   useful for transferring data between different computer architectures
   ...

You can read more about it at

   http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1014.html

I've updated the FAQ HTML file to contain references to these terms.
Thanks for pointing out the problem.

--Russ

_____________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu