[NeXus-committee] suggestion: remove attribute 'rank' from NXDL element <dimension>

[Joachim Wuttke]

I suggest to remove the attribute 'rank' from the
NXDL element <dimension>.


Rationale:

It's redundant. The actual rank of a field can be
inferred easily by counting the number of <dim>
elements within the <dimension>...</dimension> clause.

The slight advantage it might have for human readers
of the *.nxdl.xml files is far outweighed by
- the cognitive burder of one attribute more
- the risk of inconsistency
- the need for checking consistency

Actually, there are inconsistencies right now.
In our 93 *.nxdl.xml files, there are altogether 295
occurences of <dimension>. In 22 cases the attribute
'rank' is missing; to check, use
   grep '<dimensions' */*.nxdl.xml | grep -v rank

In four cases, the attribute value is 'dataRank' and
'anyRank'. The introduction of these special keywords
indicates confusion about correct specification of ranks
and dimensions.


Implementation:

I am modifying utils/nxdl2rst.py anyway; unless I am
advised differently, the new version will determine
rank by counting the <dim> elements; the attribute 'rank'
will be ignored.

Does anybody dispose of tools that would facilitate the
clean-up of the *.nxdl.xml files?

Is there any risk of side-effects?


How to reach a decision? Can the tech committee decide?

- Joachim

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