Status of the year-2000 DATExxxx draft proposal

[Don Wells]

Dear friends of FITS,

With strong support from the IAU FITS Working Group, I am issuing the
following statement to inform all of you that the time has come to
begin implementing the new DATExxxx syntax in your FITS reading and
writing software:

			    -=-=-=-=-=-=-

	     Status of the year-2000 DATExxxx draft proposal
		Don Wells (Chair, IAU FITS Working Group)
			       1997-08-16

The IAU FITS Working Group is currently considering the draft document

    ftp://fits.cv.nrao.edu/fits/documents/proposals/year2000.txt 

as a proposed change to the FITS standards. While some details of the
semantics and the wording of the proposed agreement are still being
negotiated, a consensus exists that the final agreement will specify
that the new date syntax DATE-OBS='1997-08-16' will replace the
existing standard date syntax DATE-OBS='16/08/97' (which will remain
valid for 1900-1999). The IAU-FWG expects to reach final agreement on
the details of this change to the FITS standards by about 1997-10-01.
Sample FITS files at

    ftp://fits.cv.nrao.edu/fits/data/samples/year-2000/ 

are available for interoperability tests.

			    -=-=-=-=-=-=-

I will be pleased to receive additional FITS files containing the new
DATExxxx syntax, and will add them to directory data/samples/year-2000/.

Regards,
Don Wells (Chair, IAU FITS Working Group)
--
  Donald C. Wells         Associate Scientist         dwells at nrao.edu
                    http://fits.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells
  National Radio Astronomy Observatory                +1-804-296-0277
  520 Edgemont Road,   Charlottesville, Virginia       22903-2475 USA