Are c-square codes intended to be explicitly visible, or to operate behind the scenes?
There are two answers to this question. First, c-squares can be implemented invisibly, as a behind-the-scenes indexing and search mechanism, hidden behind (for example) a clickable map as part of a user interface. This is probably desirable, since the user should not be expected to comprehend the code syntax in order to conduct a search. On the other hand, if c-squares codes are explicitly included in web documents, for example, then potentially they can be harvested as regular “words” by internet search engines and (one day) used for possible spatial searching. Currently, in CMAR’s “MarLIN” metadata directory, both approaches are used: the user search interface employs c-squares searching, but this is never apparent to the user; however the returned documents do include a set of c-squares codes, for potential harvesting by internet search engines (see example records at http://www.marine.csiro.au/csquares/samples.htm).
