From arots at head-cfa.cfa.harvard.edu Thu Aug 21 09:15:00 2003 From: arots at head-cfa.cfa.harvard.edu (Arnold Rots) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 09:15:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [fitsmime] Minutes of the IAU FWG Meeting in Sydney Message-ID: <200308211315.h7LDF0sJ003318@xebec.cfa.harvard.edu> With apologies if you get more than one copy of these minutes. - Arnold -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnold H. Rots Chandra X-ray Science Center Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory tel: +1 617 496 7701 60 Garden Street, MS 67 fax: +1 617 495 7356 Cambridge, MA 02138 arots at head-cfa.harvard.edu USA http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- IAU Commission 5 FITS Working Group Monday, 21 July 2003 Sydney, AUS Chair: Donald C. Wells Recorder: Arnold H. Rots 1. Report of Significant Milestones The following significant milestones were reached during the past triennium: - The NOST FITS standard version 2 (NOST 100-2.0) was adopted and published. - WCS: The first two papers were adopted and published; included is an agreement on units. The third paper on spectroscopy is available in draft. - A FITS MIME RFC draft request has been filed. 2. GA Resolution Don Wells presented a class C IAU GA resolution recommending the use of the WCS standards as described in papers I and II: Commission 5 recognizing the scientific requirement to accurately compare images obtained at different observatories, in different andpasses, and with different angular resolution, recommends that all astronomical observatories and computing facilities recognize and support the celestial coordinate World Coordinate System [WCS] standard as described in Astronomy and Astrophysics vol.395, pp.1061-1075 and 1077-1122 (2002), in addition to recognizing and supporting the basic FITS standard as described in Astronomy and Astrophysics vol.376, pp.359-380 (2001). It was adopted by Commission 5 and will be printed in the proceedings. 3. Exhortations by the Outgoing Chairman The business of the IAU FWG is "herding cats". It will only work through consensus and persuasion since there is no enforcement mechanism. Consequently, No-votes are very undesirable. Total design freedom is bad. The purpose of standardization is to aid the creative craftsman, not to enforce mediocre conformity. One should proceed carefully. As an example, the IEEE agreement was reached in 1989 after waiting five years; had it been reached earlier, we might well have ended up with a DEC-VAX floating point standard. Therefore: beware of hasty decisions - WCS is another case in point. Procedures should also be orderly. The voting process is intended to work as follows: - technical issues are resolved at the level of the regional committees or ad-hoc technical task forces - wait till there are no No-votes - beware of regional vetoes - the IAU FWG should only deliberate polities and policy issues We need to remin sensitive to international cultural issues. I am surprised that there has not yet been a call for accommodating an extended character set. 4. Nominations and Election of Officers The following nominations were presented: Chair: William Pence (GSFC/NASA, USA) Vice-chair: Francois Ochsenbein (CDS, France) Note: the original nomination of Patrick Wallace was withdrawn at the candidate's request, in view of substantial changes in his funding environment. Both were elected by acclamation. The FWG expressed its deep appreciation for the efforts and contributions of the outgoing officers, Don and Ernst. 5. Membership How should the membership of the IAU FWG, and the rules that control it, be structured? The only changes that have happened since the WG was instituted were by attrition. Clearly, there is a need for turnover in the membership, as well as for rules that govern this turnover and the selection of new members. Something like a nominating committee will need to be established and while we are at it, we might as well consider the same questions for electing officers. This is an issue that will need to be worked out in the next triennium. 6. Proposal Procedure There are a number of suggestions floating around for changes to the procedures that govern the handling of proposals. In particular, the chair suggested: - Concurrent discussion in the regional committees - Simultaneous voting in the regional committees - Not voting by a regional committee should be interpreted as a no-vote There was some discussion on this last issue and the consensus seemed to be that a regional committee's not voting should be considered as an abstention, not a No-vote (i.e., veto). Clearly, some thought needs to be given to the regional representation (and especially lack thereof) provided by the three existing regional committees. Again, these procedures need to be tackled in the next triennium. 7. Pending Proposals and Level of Conformance Questions have been raised about what level of conformance should be expected, especially in connection with the two pending proposals concerning bintables. The crucial question is: Should all functionality be implemented by all conforming software? One could take the view that the three bintable conventions, by their presence in an appendix, already enjoyed protected status and therefore do not need formal standard-level status. Clarification of the conformance requirements for full-fledged standards and recognized conventions is highly desirable. It is our intent to restart these two proposal with an explanatory preface, through all regional committees. 8. VO Standard Development Commission 5 has received a request (granted) from the VO community to organize a VO standards working group. The intent is that the VO standards process move considerably faster than the FITS standards process. Since the VO is an evolving-standards environment (as opposed to OFAF: Once-FITS-Always-FITS) this may well be feasible. Clearly, coordination of efforts is desirable.