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Russ Rew: Re: 980518: article for Analtyical Chemistry

------- Forwarded Message

Date:    Mon, 18 May 1998 15:30:58 -0600
From:    Russ Rew <address@hidden>
To:      Jim Kling <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: 980518: article for Analtyical Chemistry 

>To: address@hidden
>From: Jim Kling <address@hidden>
>Subject: article for Analytical Chemistry
>Organization: .
>Keywords: 199805182052.OAA04900

Hi Jim,

> I'm doing a brief article for Analytical Chemistry -- basically an
> update on the progress of the ANDI standards being developed through
> ASTM. I'd like to speak with someone regarding netCDF and how it relates
> to the work to the ANDI standards... is it a competitor? Or will it be
> incorporated into the standards?

I can answer questions about netCDF, as one of the developers.

NetCDF is merely a data model, interface, and format for array-oriented
scientific data.  It grew out of needs for a general data model and
machine-independent format for atmospheric science data, but has been
used in some other fields as well.

There was a flurry of activity in using netCDF for data exchange formats
for chromatography and mass spectrometry in 1992 and 1994, but I haven't
heard much about this effort lately.  The only URL I had for information
about this effort, <http://www.ultranet.com/~lasf/andi.html>, seems to
not work anymore.  I did hear from Bob Macdonald (developer of JCAMP-DX,
a competing format) in February that

    David Stranz has written a special MS-API layer on top of netCDF for
    the ASMS.  It has over a hundred data items, each with its own name
    and a corresponding variable name.  Both are compiled into the
    MS-API.  This is an advantage (??) over the netCDF API which is
    independent of the data names!!

> I'd also like to post a message to the netCDF mailing list, to get
> opinions about the ANDI standards, whether they're going in the right
> direction with them, etc.

That sounds fine, although many of the subscribers to the netcdfgroup
mailing list may not know anything about the ANDI standards, since most
of them are associated with atmospheric sciences, oceanography, and
other geosciences.  You might have better luck posting to a mailing list
or news group with a higher concentration of analytical chemists or
people who develop instrumentation systems for analytical chemistry ...

> My deadline for this article is this coming Friday, so if you feel it
> appropriate, please let me know how best to proceed posting a message.

You can post a message by simply sending it to the address
"address@hidden", but you should first subscribe to the
mailing list, since we only allow members to post as a way to try to
fight spam.  You can subscribe temporarily to the netcdfgroup mailing
list from 

   http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/mailing-lists.html

> Thanks,

You're welcome!

> Jim Kling
> Science and Technology Writer
> Bellingham, Wash
> http://nasw.org/users/jkling

_____________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu

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