make distance and distance-unit attributes generalized across the entire schema

[trondhuso]

Shot-distance-units
Summary:
A purpose to add the attribute shot-distance-units to the action-soccer-play element.
Description:
There is a need to show from what distance the ball was kicked, e.g. when scoring a goal. It can also be needed to show from what distance the free-kick was taken from.
Today we have the shot-distance which can be used like this:
@shot-distance=”30 meter”, but it would be far more helpful to have @shot-distance=”30” @shot-distance-units=”meter” so that we can differ on what needed, and probably also those who want to use meter or other units can do this. And also show it graphically.
@shot-distance-unit is used in other plugins like ice-hockey.
Action:
Add the attribute to the element mentioned above.
Considerations:
Shall we use unit or the plural form units? Michael Westbay would like to use units on its own, which could be even better than the above example. We could then use @shot-distance=”30” @Units=”meter”. We could then add different units to a vocab or schema.
An example from Michael is:

<height value="179" units="cm"/>
<weight value="80" units="kg"/>

Or for stadium dimensions:

<field-dimension item="home-to-left-foul-pole" value="100" units="m"/>
<field-dimension item="left-field-fense" value="2.75" units="m"/>

Another consideration is: If we do not use a vocab, shall it then be best practice to use abbreviations or not. Are abbreviations the same around the globe? I know that we use m for meters in Norway, and km for kilometers. How ever, miles are different. In Norway we use Mile = 10 km, while we define an English mile as what it is – some 1500+/- meters.
Third consideration: Westbay has noticed that we are using unit/units inconsistent, so we should go for one of them. On the Wikipedia I found International System of Units, and so I vote for units, but I have no strong feelings for an attributename.
Westbay also want the vocabulary of metrics (weight, length, temperature, etc.) standardized.
Other usages of Unit:
Cycling:
Charleroi - Huy - 201 km: distance=201, unit=km
Soccer:
Goooooal!, 20 m: distance = 20, unit=m
Freekick: distance to goal: 30, unit=meter
Alpine Skiing: Lauberhorn Downhill slope: 4455 meters, distance=4455, unit=m. start altitude: 2315 meters (height: 2315, unit=meter), finish altitude: 1290 (height:1290, unit=meter). Vertical drop:1025 meter ("distance"=1025, unit=meter)
Temperature-start: -10 unit=celcius
Temperature-finish:-5 unit=celcius
Cross-Country: 50km mass-start, freestyle men: distance=50, unit=km

@speed=50 @unit=km/t 
@speed=35 @unit=mph

Some other discussions that has been on the dev-list:
Hubertus: I would prefer representing measures as separate elements, where units is an attribute of the measure-element.
Continuing my review of "core" issues. The sportsml convention is to specify unit
types in the attribute name to accompany the attribute for the metric type. So:
We can discuss. But according in this structure, the units attribute needs to refer to the other attribute. SportsML uses a lot of attributes. The alternative is to have the thing measured as an element to which the measurement elements are children.

Simple Example:

<sports-event>
 <event-actions>
 <event-actions-soccer>
 <action-soccer-play shot-distance="30" shot-distance-units="meter" />
 </event-actions-soccer>
 </event-actions>
 </sports-event>
</sports-content>

or

<sports-event>
 <event-actions>
 <event-actions-soccer>
 <action-soccer-play shot-distance="30" units="meter" />
 </event-actions-soccer>
 </event-actions>
 </sports-event>
</sports-content>

[trondhuso]

Comments from Redmine:
Updated by Trond Huso about 3 years ago

What is the status here?
Status for "my" plugins:
Alpine-skiing uses units
Soccer plugin uses units

Updated by Paul Kelly about 3 years ago
Someone has to go through the whole spec looking for references to measured units and see if there's a universal solution.

Updated by Paul Kelly 15 days ago
Not done in v3. Do we still want it?

Updated by Johan Lindgren about 7 hours ago
In 3.0 we have in action-attributes both shot-distance and shot-distance-units. But also a distance with no connecting units. In coverageAttributes we have another distance.
In american football we have distance-for-1st-down
In golfactions we have start-distance and end-distance.