Re: [h5md-user] attribute modification_time

[Peter Colberg]

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 04:36:09PM +0200, Felix Höfling wrote:
> Am 29.05.2013, 13:07 Uhr, schrieb Felix Höfling <address@hidden>:
> 
> >the /h5md group contains the attribute "creation_time". I suggest
> >to provide "modification_time" (or "last_modified") as well to
> >document manipulations of the H5MD file after the initial
> >simulation. The description could be:
> >
> >modification_time: The time when then file was modified last. It
> >uses the same format as "creation_time". H5MD writers are advised
> >to update the field just before closing the file.
> 
> I noted the point "Date and time tracking" in the discussion section
> http://nongnu.org/h5md/discussion.html, which considerably extends
> my suggestion. However, this seems to be too involved for the first
> release.

Good thing you mentioned this HDF5 feature for tracking the time of
object creation.

I feel that the manual “creation_time” attribute should not be
included in the first H5MD release, since there are apparently many
cases where this single attribute is not sufficient to describe the
evolution of an H5MD file through time.

I propose to drop the attribute, and instead include an implementation
hint that points out how to track creation times using HDF5. For a
start, we could recommend to track the creation time of the "h5md"
group.

Peter