Hi Martin,
In your original posting you mentioned a goal of creating better ISO 
support for netCDF in Geotoolkit.  I'm assuming that the focus is on 
supporting local NetCDF files that geotoolkit reads and then maps to the 
ISO metadata classes, is that correct?
If this is the case, I don't think that using UnidatataDD2MI.xsl is a 
good initial reference point for your task as there are some 
implementation details that are creating some confusion.  ncISO has two 
implementations, in the first it acts as a client to a THREDDS server 
and accesses data/metadata contained in NetCDF via the NetcdfDataset 
object (using OpenDAP) AND has access to THREDDS metadata.  In the 
second implementation, it acts as a service embedded within THREDDS and 
again has access to the local file (or virtual dataset) and THREDDS 
metadata.
If my assumption is correct about your goal of providing better ISO 
support for local netCDF files in Geotoolkit, then I would rely mostly 
on the ACDD convention mapping located here:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf-java/formats/DataDiscoveryAttConvention.html
The xsl mapping could then be useful in terms of looking at any 
precedence issues, when for example, you have spatial and temporal 
extent information coming from the NetCDF axis that conflicts with 
information contained in the file attributes.
-Dave
On 10/6/2011 9:18 AM, Martin Desruisseaux wrote:
Hello again Dave
Sorry to bother you for what may be a trivial question (I'm also 
unfamiliar with XPath, in case my question is related to XPath syntax)...
On the following page:
https://geo-ide.noaa.gov/wiki/index.php?title=NetCDF_Attribute_Convention_for_Dataset_Discovery#Recommended
For example we can read for the "creator_name" attribute a 
"metadata/creator/name" THREDDS path. But I'm not sure how to 
interpret this path. Is it a "name" attribute inside a "creator" group 
which is itself inside a "metadata" group? What means the @ character 
that we can read in some place? (for example 
"metadata/creator/contact@url")?
Later on the same page, there is a NcML example which contains 
(simplified):
<group name="THREDDSMetadata">
   <attribute name="id" value="crm_v1" />
   <attribute name="creator_name" value="David Neufeld"/>
   <attribute name="creator_email" value="David.Neufeld@xxxxxxxx"/>
</group>
But this doesn't seem consistent with my previous paragraph:
    * The group name is "THREDDSMetadata", not "metadata"
    * There is no "creator" sub-group with a "name" attribute, but
      instead a "creator_name" attribute.
Furthermore the 
http://ngdc.noaa.gov/metadata/published/xsl/nciso2.0/UnidataDD2MI.xsl 
file seems to give yet an other picture, since the path is defined as 
(omitting the global attribute):
/nc:netcdf/nc:group[@name='THREDDSMetadata']/nc:group[@name='creators']/nc:group[@name='creator']/nc:attribute[@name='name']/@value
Which I interpret as "name" attribute inside a "creator" group, itself 
inside a "creators" group (does it means that we can have many groups 
named "creator" inside "creators" in a NetCDF file? I know we can do 
that in XML, but is it allowed in NetCDF too?), itself inside 
"THREDDSMetadata" group.
So I'm a little bit confused... Maybe my understing is not correct? 
What are the THREDDS attributes we are supposed to look at?
    Martin