[fitsbits] reopening of Public Comment Period on the INHERIT convention

[Lucio Chiappetti]

ANNOUNCEMENT:  START OF FORMAL PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD

This is to announce the official reopening of a formal Public Comment 
Period to reserve in the FITS Standard document a keyword (INHERIT) for 
use by a registered convention (not part of the Standard)

A previous PCP was held in June-July (started on 19 Jun 2015).

We are now re-opening the Public Comment Period to report the situation 
before passing to a vote to modify the standard document.

The so called header inheritance (for short INHERIT) convention allows to 
specify whether keywords common to primary and extension HDUs can be 
written only once in the primary HDU and inherited by the extensions.

During the previous PCP, contrasting opinions were expressed towards the 
original proposal, which aimed to *incorporate* in the standard the 
INHERIT convention. This was actually one of the more controversial 
proposals during the recent PCPs.

Therefore we are NO LONGER proposing to promote the INHERIT convention 
as part of the standard, but merely to recognize its existence as a 
registered convention, and to reserve a single keyword for its support to 
prevent future conflicts.


The proposed text consists of a couple of paragraphs (and a few words) 
highlighted in brick red in section 4.4.2.6 as presented in first page 
of the draft available at this link
http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/FITS/Conventions/inherit-rev.pdf

The text contains also in the second page also an excerpt of Appendix H.3, 
which now makes clear the INHERIT convention remains a registered 
convention.

It contains as well in the third page a new Appendix K which provides a 
brief description of the convention.


Please review the text carefully and post any comments, criticisms, or 
suggestions on the FITSBITS mailing list.

Supporting material for the PREVIOUS public comment period announcement 
can be retrieved from the FITSBITS archives starting from 
https://listmgr.nrao.edu/pipermail/fitsbits/2015-June/002618.html
==================================================================

The reopened Public Comment Period starts today 07 June 2016 and will 
last until 17 June 2016, unless extensions are requested and motivated.

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