[fitsbits] reopening of Public Comment Period on the Green Bank convention

[Tom McGlynn (NASA/GSFC Code 660.1)]

I still disagree.  Either this additional text is a real change to the 
FITS standard such that code reading/writing FITS could be affected, or 
it is not.  Lucio seems to be arguing that it is not.  If so then I feel 
if makes the standard less clear and that alone should be enough for it 
to be omitted.   Also, I see its inclusion in the standard is implicitly 
an endorsement of this usage and I am not clear that this is a usage 
that should be encouraged.

Not do I entirely agree that this is not a real change.  Since the 
sentence discussing expanding header keywords to columns or collapsing 
columns to keywords, immediately follows a sentence with a <must>  I 
think that this paragraph goes some way towards actually incorporating 
the Green Bank convention into the standard.  I could see some one 
reading this paragraph coming to this conclusion.   For the reasons 
given before I think that the unrestricted convention is undesirable 
(i.e., without some specific knowledge of specific keyword/columns that 
are potentially affected).

Thus I see no useful purpose in adding this paragraph to the standard 
and some cost.

     Regards,
     Tom McGlynn

Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
> On Wed, 25 May 2016, Tom McGlynn (NASA/GSFC Code 660.1) wrote:
>
>> I am strongly opposed to adopting this convention within the FITS 
>> standard although I think it is perfectly appropriate for projects to 
>> use as they wish.
>
> This should be exactly the sense of the proposed text. The Green Bank 
> convention is already mentioned in the WCS papers, the WCS papers are 
> part of the standard "per incorporation", and the proposed text NOW 
> does nothing else that reporting a sentence from the WCS papers. So it 
> simply reaffirms the status quo.
>
> Therefore, unless more comments arise, I'd like to put it to a 
> procedural vote in IAU FWG next week.
>
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