[NeXus-tech] what about units and the manual?

[Mark Koennecke]

Pete,

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010, Pete R. Jemian wrote:

>
> Looking through the definitions manual for a description about units,
> there is a stunning absence of text.  On the wiki, there is this page
> 	http://www.nexusformat.org/Units

You chanced upon a discussion page which I do not know how
relevant it still is. The place to look is www.nexusformat.org/Design
in the table about attributes close to the bottom. BTW: we have
link rot, the links are no longer working.

Mark

> but the content is short of sufficient.  Didn't we have text that is
> more descriptive?
>
> Here is the content of that page:
> ----------------------% clip here %----------------------
>  Some miscellaneous Units proposals
>
> Paul Kienzle will propose a more coherent specification of data units. It 
> will be a response to the following set of proposals.
>
> The units of any stored data or metadata should be specified as an attribute, 
> unless they are dimensionless. The following conventions should be adopted:
>
>     * All units are written in singular form, without abbreviation.
>     * There will be no spaces in units.
>     * SI units will be used (e.g., metre, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin),
>     using the British English spellings (e.g., "metre", not "meter"), but
>     "angstrom" and "barn" are also allowed.
>     * More complex units will be written with mathematical operators
>     (+,-,/,^) and parentheses, with traditional operator precedence
>     (e.g.,metre/second)
>     * Prefixes are allowed, but will be separated from the unit using the
>     appropriate mathematical operator (e.g., centi*metre).
> ----------------------% clip here %----------------------
>
> This can be edited lightly and placed in the definitions manual but where?
> 	definitions/trunk/manual/ClassDefinitions.xml
> is one suggestion.
>
> Pete
>
>
>
>