[fitsbits] Draft WCS Paper V: Time

[Robert Hanisch]

> I like the reference to Gregorius, 1582.  The VOEvent standard
> references Tycho, 1573.

I looked up the reference to Gregorius (1582).  You can find it, in Latin,
via Google.  Unfortunately my secondary school and college education did not
include Latin.  (OK, sorry, yes, it was offered, but no, I did not take it.)
I know "e pluribus unum", "quo vadis", and "veni, vidi, vici".   Why are the
famous Latin quotations all so political?

This reference is a tribute to Peter Bunclark, I think, and in his memory it
would be nice to let it stand.  As a standards document I don't quite see
how it helps anything, unless we had a FITS file somehow documenting the
supernova of 1054, or something like that.  But for such a thing, we do not
need to understand TAI or whatever.

The usual thing is to let the authors publish their version, and then the
FITS commandos come in and distill it down into the formal language of the
standard.  It would be nice if this translation could be an identity matrix.

Arnold has already chastised me for finding the keywords to be obtuse and
inconsistent, and he is relying on history in his rebuttal. OK, we messed up
before, and to be consistent, we will mess up again.  Doesn't matter, it is
just a list of keywords.  I just find it strange to represent "time" as  T,
TIM, or TIME.  Or "center" as CEN, CENT, or CENTE.  We accepted this before,
so I guess we go with it.

Fitfully yours,
Bb