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Re: 970509: Suggestion re netCDF

> Date: Fri, 9 May 97 17:07:28 EDT
> From: Roberta Young <rey@loch>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: 970509: Suggestion re netCDF

Roberta,

>    i'm just having the experience of taking over code that someone who
> knows netcdf very well wrote. the worse part i find is actually locating
> the page in the netcdf userguide (i'm working with the one for the
> release on our system...netcdf2.4.x). and the more functions the worse
> it gets.
> 
>    there are plenty of unix books around (unix in a nutshell,...), but
> very little on netcdf. it would be really alot easier on the scientist
> encountering it if either there were an alphabetical listing of functions
> with page references or a man page for each function.
> 
>    the folks at ncar have the right idea for a package without alot of
> printed matter out there...a man page for each function or call 
> especially if there are alot of them (easier to use than to have
> to grapple with several big looseleaf binders of man pages). the 
> one thing ncar is not sucessful with doc's is putting it all out
> on the web (mit ot ncar web access tends to be pretty bad due
> to network load).
> 
>    just thoughts from someone new to the package going through
> it in a really need to know fast basis....

Good suggestion.  For version 2.4.x, something like what you want is the
"Function and Variable Index" of the User's Guide, available on-line
with links to the defining sections for each function at

   http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/guide_18.html#SEC121

This is not quite as simple as what you want, because it lists constant
names as well as function names and also indexes examples as well as
interface descriptions, but the entries are sorted alphabetically and
lead directly to the interface descriptions.

I'll try to come up with something closer to what you're suggesting for
the netCDF-3 Users' Guides.

--Russ