status of variable attribute `_Unsigned = "true"` as best practices

[Alexander-Barth]

The best practices guide includes the following concerning the unsigned data types:

A new proposed convention is to create a variable attribute _Unsigned = "true" to indicate that integer data should be treated as unsigned.

It seems that it has been added around 2009 but it is not part of the CF conventions as far as I know. I am wondering if it is still expected to be part of a standard (given that NetCDF4 has native unsigned types). If not, should this point be removed from the best practices guide?

Related discussions:
JuliaGeo/NCDatasets.jl/issues/133
Unidata/netcdf4-python/issues/656

[WardF]

These best practices are not necessarily as apply to the CF Conventions, but rather for using netCDF in general. That said, I'll take a look at this, thanks!