[UDUNITS #CEJ-221616]: UDUNITs on the web -- help! (in 3 acts)

John,

> Hi all,
> 
> I'm trying to document for our users what units should be used with CF
> netCDF files.
> 
> CF declares that only those units supported by CF are acceptable. They
> helpfully point to this page to determine what those units are:
> 
> http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/udunits/udunits-2-units.html
> 
> My first observation is that this page has 5 links, that currently are
> broken. So that's the thing that needs fixing ASAP.

This is a common problem with on-line documentation: links to highly specific 
information often break when the documentation is restructured (which it was). 
The relevant on-line links are now (in order from most robust but general to 
most fragile but specific):

    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/udunits
    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/udunits/udunits-current/doc/udunits
    
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/udunits/udunits-current/doc/udunits/udunits2.html
    
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/udunits/udunits-current/doc/udunits/udunits2.html#Database

> As I recall, though, once that is fixed, the users don't actually see a
> list of acceptable units.  They will see XML files, which are hard for
> many to parse to even get a clue. To my knowledge, there is no page that
> lists the values in each of those 5 XML tables, perhaps in user-readable
> HTML tables. In the past, I've had to build that myself.

That's a good idea that, unfortunately, has a lower priority than some other 
ideas (we're a small shop; UDUNITS has much less than one person working on it).

It might be possible to accomplish this via XSLT. I'll have a talk with an 
expert. 

> And once the terms from those 5 pages are in visible form, it is still
> hard to tell what legal units look like. Data in particular can have a
> few different forms, as I recall.  There does not appear to be
> information that summarizes all of this in one place.

The section on unit syntax 
<https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/udunits/udunits-current/doc/udunits/udunits2lib.html#Syntax>
 is insufficient?

What, specifically, would you like to see?

> Is there any chance Unidata could find some resources to pull together
> user-facing documentation that makes 'unit-hunting' trivial for the
> non-technical user?

We're peddling as fast as we can. :-)

Your email should help.

> john
> 
> ------------------------------------
> John Graybeal
> Sr. Data Manager, Metadata & Semantics
> 
> M +1 408 675-5445
> skype: graybealski
> Marinexplore
> 920 Stewart Drive
> Sunnyvale 94085
> California, USA
> www.marinexplore.com

Regards,
Steve Emmerson

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: CEJ-221616
Department: Support UDUNITS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed