Merged in formatrn (pull request #21)

Added note about the ancestry to the release notes of the format Approved-by: Oliver Ruebel <oruebel@lbl.gov>
NeurodataWithoutBorders · Jul 12, 2017 · cac90b3 · cac90b3
2 parents 198e340 + 8e12b8f
commit cac90b3
Showing 1 changed file with 17 additions and 3 deletions.
diff --git a/docs/format/source/format_release_notes.rst b/docs/format/source/format_release_notes.rst
@@ -131,7 +131,7 @@ Added missing metadata
 Improved identifiably of objects
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
-All groups and datasets are now required to either have a unique ``name`` or a unique ``neurodata_type`` defined.
+**Change:** All groups and datasets are now required to either have a unique ``name`` or a unique ``neurodata_type`` defined.
 
 **Reason:**  This greatly simplifies the unique identification of objects with variable names.
 
@@ -166,9 +166,9 @@ places and ensure that the same kind of information is available.
 Improved governance and accessibility
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
-**Change:** Updated release and documentation mechanisms for the NWB format sepcification
+**Change:** Updated release and documentation mechanisms for the NWB format specification
 
-**Reason:** Imporove governance, ease-of-use, extensibility, and accessibility of the NWB format specification
+**Reason:** Improve governance, ease-of-use, extensibility, and accessibility of the NWB format specification
 
 **Specific Changes**
 
@@ -183,6 +183,20 @@ Improved governance and accessibility
       programmatically access and generate format specifications
 
 
+Ancestry
+^^^^^^^^
+
+**Change:** Removed the explicit specification of ancestry as an attribute as part of the format specification
+
+**Reason:** 1) avoid redundant information as the ancestry is encoded in the inheritance of types, 2) ease maintenance,
+and 3) avoid possible inconsistencies between the ancestry attribute and the true ancestry (i.e., inheritance hierarchy)
+as defined by the spec.
+
+**Note** The new specification API as part of PyNWB/FORM makes the ancestry still easily accessible to users. As
+the ancestry can be easily extracted from the spec, we currently do not write a separate ancestry attribute
+but this could be easily added if needed.
+
+
 Specification language changes
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^