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XML schema for electronic CVIs
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Add Weeks in Age Options #25

Closed sahola closed 10 years ago

sahola commented 11 years ago

As I understand it, currently age is only reported in months and years. I think we need to allow for the reporting of age in weeks for those animal types (note MMa I didn't say "species :) ) that need age in weeks, such as swine and poultry.

mmcgrath commented 11 years ago

If no-one objects to this by 27 Sept I will consider it agreed and close this issue

ssantamaria commented 11 years ago

I do not object to adding in weeks as an option for age. I think we should discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using an existing standard for time units here. The Unified Code for Units of Measure (UCUM, http://unitsofmeasure.org/ucum.html) adopts some units from ISO 2955 and ANSI X3.50. Specifically, they use wk for week (rather than W), d for day (as you've proposed), mo for month (rather than M), and a for year (rather than Y) although it seems yr is an acceptable synonym.

ssantamaria commented 11 years ago

As discussed on the 9/9/13 call, we tentatively agreed to use standard units from UCUM for animal ages. We agreed on using d for day, wk for week, and mo for month. We discussed but did not reach a decision on the code for year. a is the case sensitive code for year in UCUM but we think it might be unfamiliar and confusing to users. I said I would look into whether yr is an acceptable synonym for year in UCUM.

My research shows that UCUM does not define or include the synonym yr for year that was present in the original standard ISO 2955 (now withdrawn). I see three possible ways for proceeding:

  1. UCUM states they accept requests for additions so I could make a request to add a synonym of yr and we'll take it from there.
  2. As UCUM provides a case sensitive entry and a case insensitive entry for each unit (see table 5 at http://unitsofmeasure.org/ucum.html#iso1000), we could switch to using the case insensitive codes (for year we would use ANN.) ANN is not as familiar to users as yr but is obviously more clear than a. The other ones we'd use are D, WK, MO.
  3. We discuss deviating from the UCUM standard by using yr or y in our XML standard and provide the rationale in a brief statement if necessary.

Thoughts?

mmcgrath commented 10 years ago

10/7 conf call -- agreed to adopt the UCUM suffixes as suggested by @ssantamaria on 9/9

sahola commented 10 years ago

I concur with Suzanne's proposition in her last comment here.

mmcgrath commented 10 years ago

I will close this by end October unless there are objections before then