Re: [h5md-user] Specifying the data type

[Felix Höfling]

Am 29.08.2013, 09:49 Uhr, schrieb Olaf Lenz <address@hidden>:

> Hi!
>
> I want to propose to extend the notation of the H5MD trees and subtrees
> to include the datatype. Example:
>
>     <data_group>
>      \-- step: INT[variable]
>      \-- time: FLOAT[variable]
>      \-- value: <type>[variable][...]
>
> This makes it easier to get what is meant from the specification, and I
> do not think it clobbers the output overmuch.
>
> Olaf

Hi Olaf,

Capitalised identifiers remind me of Fortran ... how ugly, but HDF5 uses
them as well :-(

More seriously, there is not just one integer or float type in HDF5. For
this reason, the H5MD spec just states "of integer data type" or
"real-valued". And for the most interesting datasets, the actual data in
"value", the data type is unspecified at all as it depends on the specific
data stored.

I feel that expressing all that by the tree graphs would overload them,
the focus should be on the tree structure. And for the details, the user
is encouraged to read the text, not just to look at the pictures ;-)

Felix