combined whatsnew entry for discontiguity checking and masking

[corinnebosley]

DO NOT MERGE YET.

Waiting for:

• iris.util contiguity functions and tests have been merged (Public contiguity checking #3144 )
• another PR demonstrating the alternative option of separated whatsnew entries for public contiguity checking/masking (seperate whatsnew entries for discontiguity checking and masking #3187 )

[corinnebosley]

Hmmm... it occurs to me now that I'm not sure whether to call this 'contiguity checking' or 'discontiguity checking'.

I'm thinking it should probably be 'discontiguity checking' because this can easily be extended to 'discontiguity checking and masking'. I don't think that 'contiguity checking and masking' is as correct.

[pp-mo]

👍 preferred to #3187

[DPeterK]

Yup, I prefer the combined whatsnew entry too 👍

[DPeterK]

@corinnebosley this is definitely the preferred option, but I wonder if we can update the tone of the whatsnew per my suggestion.

[DPeterK]

I don't like the use of "users" here. It implies that (a) there's an 'us' (devs) and 'them' (users), and not only that but (b) the whatsnew is by devs and for devs, and that users should be a little uncomfortable to also be here.

That said, it's hard to write these things! You can avoid the 'us' vs 'them' problem by using "you" in place of "users", which is more friendly, or not cast the whatsnew in terms of a person at all:

The function "find_discontiguities_in_bounds" can be used to check for discontiguities in the bounds arrays of cube coordinates.
Additionally, discontiguous points in coordinates can be explicitly masked using "mask_data_at_discontiguities".

Or something.

[pp-mo]

Well, I didn't expect you to hear you promoting use of the passive voice @dkillick !

Not that I object to that, but I know other people do.

[corinnebosley]

I've put this change (augmented by @dkillick's suggestions) straight into the WhatsNew (#3192) instead of here.