[NeXus-committee] questions about NeXus data structures as per Figs 1-3 of draft paper

[Pete R Jemian]

And now my opinions.

Fortunately, the instrument scientists are not the only ones with an 
interest in a standard data file.

What is the point of a standard?
I don't like the name "NXdata" since it is misleading for its purpose.
BUT, it is fundamental in NeXus.

The extra complexity of symbolic links is a very minor point.  It is 
only painful *once* to learn to how to make these links.

------------------------

Separately, I share an except of the remarks from Andrew Allen (NIST), 
outgoing chairman of the IUCr Commission on Small-Angle Scattering, 
following the recent IUCr Congress in Montreal:

"[...] there is one recommendation [from] the IUCr Executive to call on 
each discipline-based commission to specify metadata requirements that 
need to be associated with that commission’s typical datasets.  This 
call may come quite imminently, as it is perceived that specifying 
metadata requirements are a necessary next step if IUCr is to move 
forward with data deposition."

 From this I conclude these points:
* the manuscript Mark started is most timely
* It is time for the canSAS / NeXus Application Definition

Pete



On 08/18/2014 10:33 AM, Pete R Jemian wrote:
>> Why should we require NXdata? If scientists at a certain
>> instrument have no interest in using generic default
>> plotting tools, and don't like the extra complexity of
>> symbolic links in their raw data files, we should allow
>> them to use NeXus without NXdata.
>
> http://download.nexusformat.org/doc/html/motivations.html#index-0