[fitsbits] start of Public Comment Period on WCS Timing Paper

[Lucio Chiappetti]

ANNOUNCEMENT:  START OF FORMAL PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD

This is to announce the official start of the 4-week formal Public Comment 
Period on yet another (and long awaited) paper in the series of papers on 
FITS world coordinate systems entitled, "Representations of time 
coordinates in FITS" written by Rots, Bunclark, Calabretta, Allen, 
Manchester and Thompson. This Public Comment Period is the first step in 
the process of approving this paper as part of the official FITS Standard.

This important paper describes detailed conventions for defining time 
coordinates and related items in FITS files. Links to the latest 
17-March-2014 draft of this paper ("version 1.0") are available at the 
bottom of the IAU Commission 5 wiki page "FITS WG current activity" 
http://iau-commission5.wikispaces.com/WG+FITS#curact

The page makes available the paper in PDF through the links
http://hea-www.cfa.harvard.edu/~arots/TimeWCS/WCSPaper-IV-v1.0A4.pdf 
http://hea-www.cfa.harvard.edu/~arots/TimeWCS/WCSPaper-IV-v1.0Letter.pdf

This paper has gone through many revisions over several years, which can 
be tracked in the page provided by Arnold Rots (which also provides links 
to Postscript versions and earlier drafts), also linked in the wiki 
http://hea-www.cfa.harvard.edu/~arots/TimeWCS/

Please review this paper carefully and post any comments, criticisms, or 
suggestions on the FITSBITS mailing list (*not* on fitsWCS or iaufwg). 
(If you aren't already subscribed you can subscribe to FITSBITS at 
http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/fitsbits). If you previously 
submitted comments about this paper that have not been incorporated in 
this latest draft, and if you feel that they still need to be addressed, 
then please submit the comments again.

There have been extensive previous discussions of this paper on the 
'fitswcs' mail list at NRAO.  The archive of these discussions may be 
viewed at http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/fitswcs.

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The Public Comment Period starts today March 26 and will last formally for 
4 weeks. In practice, due to a coincidence of public holidays, I will 
consider it closed after April 27.

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Background information on the FITS approval process

Under the "Rules and Procedures" of the IAU FITS Working Group, the first 
step in the official approval process of any FITS proposal will be a 
formal Public Comment Period to take place on the FITSBITS mailing list. 
After that the IAU FITS Working Group Executive will review the results. 
Following that the IAU FITS Working Group will then conduct a final vote 
to approve or disapprove the proposal.  These rules and procedures as 
recently updated are more fully described at 
http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/iaufwg/iaufwg_rules.html.

-- 
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)
Current IAU FWG chair