[fitsbits] updates to the FITS standard document

[William Pence]

Lucio proposed the shortened 3 week review period for logistical reasons 
because the conventions under review have been in use for years and 
should be familiar to most FITS users.  But in any case, changing the 
review and voting rules in this way implicitly requires the unanimous 
consent of the IAU FWG members; any member may request more time for the 
review of any of the proposals, if desired.  Many of the conventions 
that are under review here are, in my opinion, fairly benign and 
non-controversial, so I'd expect that only a couple of them will 
generate much discussion.

Regarding the suggestion to postpone these activities until after the 
IAU General Assembly, I don't see any reason for delay. Bob Hanisch, the 
President of IAU Commission 5 (the parent commission for the IAU FWG) 
indicated in an email to the IAUFWG Executive Committee just last week 
that he anticipates that the current IAU-FWG will transition into a 
subcommittee to the new "Working Group for Data Representations" in the 
reorganized C.B2 commission. This still needs to be confirmed by the new 
C.B2 president, Michael Wise, but hopefully this transition will be 
fairly seamless and will have little or no effect on how we conduct our 
business.

Finally, I'd like to recommend that when commenting on the various 
proposals that are currently under review, that we restrict our comments 
to only one proposal per email to FITSBITS.   This will make it much 
easier to follow the thread of comments about each individual proposal.

-Bill

On 6/21/2015 3:47 PM, Tim Pearson wrote:
> Dear Lucio,
>
> I agree with Calabretta and Forveille that it is far from clear that these "conventions" have any place in the standard. There are good reasons why they have not been made part of the standard in the past. Concurrent three-week public comment periods for six separate changes to the standard will not give us enough time to fully air all the issues involved, and I urge that this be delayed until after the IAU reorganization. I note that the reduction of the comment period to three weeks is in violation of the IAU FITS Working Group's own rules: "This public discussion period will normally last for at least 4 weeks, and the EC may extend it as necessary to allow time for the discussions to reach a conclusion." This is a case where extension of the period is needed, not curtailment.
>
> Some of the changes require FITS readers to make changes to their code to conform to the new standard; e.g., readers that are unaware of the "Continued string keyword" convention can corrupt headers while processing a file. This is dangerous. At the very least the version of the standard that the reader needs to follow has to be recorded somewhere in the header, e.g., by changing the value of the SIMPLE keyword.
>
> Tim
> --
> Timothy J. Pearson
> Research Professor in Radio Astronomy
> Mail Code 249-17, Caltech,
> Pasadena, California 91125, USA
> E-mail:    tjp at astro.caltech.edu
>
> On Jun 20, 2015, at 12:57 AM, THIERRY FORVEILLE <thierry.forveille at ujf-grenoble.fr> wrote:
>
>>>
>>>> 2) a task force within the IAU FITS WG has been considering the inclusion
>>>>     of a number of registered conventions as part of the standard.
>>>>
>>>>     For 6-7 of them we have (or nearly have) a text to be included in
>>>>     the FITS Standard Document. According to the rules, this will be
>>>>     subject to a Public Review Period here on FITSBITS, with the goal
>>>>     to have the IAUFWG vote (on each convention) during July.
>>>>
>>>>     Considering that the conventions are in use since several years
>>>>     (so their operablity and interoperability is surely proven), and
>>>>     were discussed when registering the conventions themselves, to
>>>>     speed up things the Public Review Period will be reduced to 3 weeks.
>>>
>>> Noting that the process of registering conventions was concerned only
>>> with ensuring the adequacy of their documentation, not the adequacy of
>>> the conventions themselves, I just want to clarify whether we are being
>>> asked to consider adopting these conventions, unaltered, as standards,
>>> or whether they are subject to change.
>>>
>>> In particular, I note that the INHERIT convention attracted more than
>>> the usual amount of discussion on fitsbits and iaufwg, with many
>>> respondents expressing strong reservations about it.  At the urging of
>>> its proponents, INHERIT was ultimately registered as a convention on the
>>> basis of its wide usage within a particular sector of astronomy, not
>>> necessarily as the model for a new component of the standard.
>>>
>>> With eight years worth of hindsight, the links accessible from
>>> http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/registry/inherit.html make for interesting
>>> reading.  It seems clear now that those members of the FWG who took an
>>> interest should have been allowed to record a short summary (say 150
>>> words) of their arguments for or against the conventions.
>>>
>> I share Mark's concerns, and at least at this stage I intend to vote NO
>> on the less obvious of the conventions becoming part of the standard.
>> Every addition to the standard has a cost in FITS readers that must
>> be balanced against what it gains us, and some of the conventions
>> don't make my cut.
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> fitsbits mailing list
> fitsbits at listmgr.nrao.edu
> https://listmgr.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/fitsbits
>

-- 
____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence    Astrophysicist     William.Pence at nasa.gov
NASA/GSFC Code 662     [Emeritus]       +1-301-286-4599 (voice)
Greenbelt MD 20771                      +1-301-286-1684 (fax)