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

[William Pence]

On 6/1/2016 11:47 AM, THIERRY FORVEILLE wrote:

>> The paragraph of descriptive text about the Green Bank convention
>> (http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/FITS/Conventions/greenbank-rev2.pdf)
>> comes *verbatim* from the first World Coordinate System paper published
>> by Greisen and Calibretta in 2002.  The IAU FITS Working Group voted
>> unanimously to approve this paper in December 2002, so this text has
>> been officially part of the FITS standard for more than 15 years.  It is
>> a bit late to raise objections to this now.
>>
> My (potential) objection is to inclusion in the main body standard. I am
> perfectly fine with the GB convention as a convention, documented in
> an appendix.

I don't understand your objection.  The resolution that was adopted by 
the IAU-FWG on 18 Dec 2002 states that "The IAU FITS Working Group 
[IAU-FWG] adopts the World Coordinate System [WCS] papers 
"Representations of world coordinates in FITS" (A&A 395, 1059-1073 
[2002]) and "Representations of celestial coordinates in FITS" (A&A 395, 
1075-1120 [2002]) as additions to the current FITS standard as specified 
by "Definition of the Flexible Image Transport System [FITS]" (A&A 376, 
359-380 [2001]), which was adopted by IAU-FWG on 2000-10-12."  Thus the 
entire text of both of those WCS papers, including the paragraph that 
describes the Green Bank Convention, is fully part of the FITS standard 
and has just as much authority as the text in the standard document itself.

An abbreviated summary of the text in the WCS papers was added as 
Section 8 in version 3 of the FITS standard document in July 2008, but 
the introduction to that section refers back to the original papers and 
states "These WCS papers have beenformally approved by the IAUFWG and 
therefore are incorporated by reference as an official part of this 
Standard. Thereader should refer to these papers for additional details 
and background information that cannot be included here."

Therefore, the paragraph of text in the first WCS paper that refers to 
the Green Bank convention  has been fully part of the FITS standard 
since 2002.  The current proposal to reproduce that paragraph in the 
body of the standard document itself is simply an editorial change to 
the document and is not a substantial change. For this reason, as Lucio 
previously said, this is a *procedural* proposal that only requires a 
simple majority of votes by the IAUFWG members to be adopted.

-Bill