Re: NetCDF, Objective-C, Apple's Spotlight

Tom,

> The two main questions I have for you about this feature are these:
> 
> 1. Do you recommend any standard attribute names for display in the finder?

The CF Conventions

  http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/eaton/cf-metadata/CF-1.0.html

are becoming more widely used than any other, so I recommend at least
indexing their "standard_name" attribute 

  http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/eaton/cf-metadata/standard_name.xml

for identifying model parameters or observational data by a canonical
name.  It's more useful than "long_name", for which there is no
maintained standard.

> 2. UTI - the universal type identifier is the new method in osx to
> ID file types (beyond file name extensions and resource forks).
> Right now, I'm using:
> 
> com.lostinthemountains.netcdfeditor.netcdf
> 
> I'd rather use an UTI that's more official with UNIDATA, something like:
> 
> edu.ucar.unidata.netcdf
> 
> However, I want to make sure I'd have permission to do that or if an
> UTI already exists, use that.
> 
> Do you think there would be a problem?

"edu.ucar.unidata.netcdf" seems like an excellent UTI for netCDF data.
I see no problem with using it.  I'll recommend its use for anyone
else who needs a UTI for netCDF data.

--Russ