VOUnit for solar density or metallicity?

[Molinaro, Marco]

Hi Markus,

A few comments.

Example: Solar/Space Weather people use SFU
as a really common and understood unit.

I don't expect them to be bought in to use
10**-22W.m**-2.Hz-1 instead of SFU.

So, if I'm to follow your reasoning, should
SFU be in VOUnits unquoted?

Or try to force solar people to use Jansky
(4 orders of magnitude away)?

I might have mistaken something.

It's not a matter of legacy (not here and I
suspect other cases exist), but some units,
derived from basic SI ones, are commonly used.

How should we cope with that?
Let clients understand that all 10**-22W.m**-2.Hz**-1
means SFU?
Adding extra metadata to define when it means SFU
and when not?

Cheers
    Marco


Il giorno mer 1 giu 2022 alle ore 09:48 Markus Demleitner <
msdemlei at ari.uni-heidelberg.de> ha scritto:

> Hi Marco,
>
> On Wed, Jun 01, 2022 at 09:07:37AM +0200, Molinaro, Marco wrote:
> > Goal would be: clients aware of these might use them,
> > unaware clients/researchers will just skip by.
>
> Would your expectation be that, say, astropy or unity would accept
> them?
>
> If so, I'd say nothing should keep us from adding them to the full
> list.  If not... well, which clients would you expect to be "aware"?
>
> > - extra parsing step for those who want to interpret
> > them (remove quote, go on parsing)
> > - extra controlled lists maintenance
> > - (a sentence in VOUnits - §2.8? -)
>
> I'd add "seduction to madnes^Wusing creative units".  I give you
> there's little we can do about legacy data, but for those we cannot
> always have ideal interoperability anyway.  For modern data, on the
> other hand, exerting a certain amount of pressure to align practices
> of questionable taste with mainstream (or, even better, sane) customs
> will make things a lot simpler for posteriority.  For instance, it
> would seem to me that with, say, decimal coordinates we are actually
> making inroads.
>
> So... I'll need quite a bit more convincing before I could see myself
> liking the idea of such a shadow unit list; I also note that there
> already is http://qudt.org/2.1/vocab/unit for the furlong/fortnight
> enthusiasts [oh: fortnight isn't even in QUDT].
>
>        -- Markus
>
>
>

-- 
Marco Molinaro
INAF - Istituto Nazionale di AstroFisica
Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste
email marco.molinaro at inaf.it
tel. [+39] 333 33 20 564 [also Telegram]
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