Re: [h5md-user] Minor revisions before H5MD v1.0

[Peter Colberg]

On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 06:15:23PM +0200, Felix Höfling wrote:
> I do not adhere to the /parameters group, but one needs a definite
> place were an H5MD reader can get the space dimension from in a
> simple and reliable way. In particular, it must not depend on the
> presence of any group, be it /trajectory or /observables or
> /observables/box. The point is that the scalar observable data sets
> are incomplete without the dimension thus breaking the
> self-descriptiveness of the data format.

Why don't you share my appreciation of simplicity and minimalism?

An attribute can always be added to the specification, but not
removed. It could later turn out that an application uses multiple
differing dimension parameters (e.g., one position dataset confined
to a plane, and another position dataset in 3-space).

The observables currently defined in the specification do not require
a dimension attribute for interpretation. For your custom needs, use,
e.g., a program parameter "parameters/dimension".

Peter