Deprecation of Random Groups

[Stephen Walton]

With regard to the draft standard's statement that random groups are
deprecated, Steve Allen comments:

> Would another term with definition "should not be applied to any new
> applications" be more acceptable?

As someone with no vested interest:  I believe that, in context, "deprecated"
means that new code which can read the old files can be written, but that new
applications should not _write_ random groups.  In the same way, several
classic Fortran-77 constructs are "deprecated" in the Fortran-90 standard. 
This means that some future standard will delete them, and that a code which
uses these constructs is not standards-conforming (and thus, potentially, the
interpretation of such code is dependent on the compiler).  Clearly AIPS 2050
will still be able to read random groups :-) .

--
Stephen Walton, Professor of Physics and Astronomy,
California State University, Northridge
stephen.walton at csun.edu