Re: [h5md-user] description attribute

[Peter Colberg]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 06:23:59PM +0200, Felix Höfling wrote:
> Hi Pierre and Peter,
>
> I suggest an optional attribute "description" to each data set.
> Descriptive group identifiers are useful, but sometimes not precise
> enough. For example, I would like to have a description like
> "potential energy per particle" attached to the observable group
> potential_energy.
>
> Are there any objections to this?

I find that short ASCII descriptions tend to add little additional
value, e.g. “potential energy per particle” clarifies that the energy
is per particle, but does not specify the unit. Further I would rather
have a mathematical formula as a description of a dataset, human
languages are often too imprecise for this purpose.

As such I would rather keep descriptions out of the data file, and
include them in the documentation of a simulation package.

We already store a h5md/creator_version attribute, and we encourage
users to use long, descriptive dataset (and group) names such as
“potential_energy” (instead of “EPOT” or “en_pot”), so it is easy
to look up a detailed, exact description with formula(s) in the
documentation.

Regards,
Peter