nexusformat / definitions

Definitions of the NeXus Standard File Structure and Contents
https://manual.nexusformat.org/
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Definition of NXsample_component is self-referential #1360

Open paulmillar opened 4 months ago

paulmillar commented 4 months ago

The current description of NXsample_component is

<doc>
    One group like this per component can be recorded For a sample consisting of multiple components.
</doc>

Ignoring the incorrect capitalisation of For (either F should be lower-case or there is a missing full-stop), the description is problematic because it only defines NXsample_component in terms of "components". Beyond stating that a NeXus file should contain either no instances or multiple instances of this group, the description is a semantically null sentence.

Put another way: there is nothing which says what is a component.

Therefore, someone will have a hard time when trying to decide whether their data should be defined with (multiple) NXsample_component groups or just a single NXsample?