[fitswcs] WCS proposal review by FITS regional committees

[Don Wells]

Dear Chairs and members of the FITS regional committees,

As you know, the NOST_100-2.0 document was finally approved by IAU-FWG
almost one month ago.  The next item for the FITS committees to
consider is the three papers of the WCS proposal:

    http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~egreisen/wcs.ps.gz
    http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~egreisen/ccs.ps.gz (note 2000-11-07 version)
    http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~egreisen/scs.ps.gz

A year ago, at ADASS'99, it was agreed that these papers should
proceed in the Committees. Recently I reviewed the WCS papers again,
and again concluded that they are indeed ready, except perhaps for
section 5 (Spectral coordinate variation with other coordinates) of
the third paper. 

The first step of the FITS standards procedure is that the FITS
regional committee in which a proposal originates should review it.
After that committee adopts the proposal the remaining FITS committees
should review it. The IAU-FWG will not consider the proposal until all
of the regional committees (currently European, Japanese and North
American) have adopted it.

The original version of the WCS proposal originated in the North
American region.  Therefore, I now ask that the WGAS FITS Committee,
chaired by Peter Teuben, begin consideration of the three WCS papers
for adoption as additions to the FITS standard.

The members of the WGAS committee represent a considerable variety of
observatories, both ground- and space-based, operating in all of the
frequency ranges observed by astronomers. Several of the major
astronomical software packages are represented in the membership.  I
ask all of these WGAS FITS Committee members to consider carefully
whether the WCS proposal meets their needs as well as the needs of
other areas of astronomy.  If you have questions, ask them!  If you
want to add features, propose them!  If you think the wording can be
improved, suggest changes!  If you have concerns about some aspect of
the proposal, but are reluctant to voice your concerns publicly, send
private email to me, and I will handle the matter for you and preserve
your anonimity.  If any of you expect to be opposed to the WCS
proposal in the formal voting, please tell me and/or Peter Teuben by
private email.

Because of the universal interest in this subject, its complexity, and
the many years of prior public discussion of it, I think it will be
appropriate for the European FITS Committee and the Japanese FITS
Committee to also begin discussions of the WCS proposal at this time.

Because so many people worldwide are concerned with this WCS proposal
and because we have so many technical consultants who need to be
available during the deliberations, I have reactivated the
fitswcs at nrao.edu mailing list and have added the FITS regional
committee members to the list in addition to the authors of the papers
and the technical experts who participated in the previous rounds of
WCS negotiations two years ago (we used fitswcs for our discussions).
I have also added some other people who I know are specially
interested in the WCS proposals.  I am prepared to add other names as
needed. I append a list of the current subscribers to fitswcs.

The fitswcs at nrao.edu mailing list will enable any committee member or
other interested person to raise a WCS issue in a single place where
all of the WCS experts will be available to answer it.  If the authors
of the papers make a change in response to such discussions, they can
announce the new version on fitswcs at nrao.edu where all of the
interested people will get the message immediately.

				 -=-

I will be attending ADASS'2000 in Boston next week, and will Chair the
annual FITS BoF session at 7:30pm on Monday night (2000-11-13T19:30).
I will announce that I have asked the regional committees to begin
considering WCS.  If the people present want to discuss WCS matters,
we can, but I do not expect that that will happen.  We are more likely
to discuss other matters, like the relationship between XML and FITS.

Regards,
Don Wells [Chair, IAU FITS Working Group]

  Donald C. Wells      Scientist - GBT Project        dwells at nrao.edu
                    http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells
  National Radio Astronomy Observatory                +1-804-296-0277
  520 Edgemont Road,   Charlottesville, Virginia       22903-2475 USA

Members of list 'fitswcs':

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davis at noao.edu
tody at noao.edu
joye at angie.harvard.edu
mark.calabretta at atnf.csiro.au
egreisen at nrao.edu
hanisch at stsci.edu
pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov
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deul at strw.leidenuniv.nl
jcm at head-cfa.harvard.edu
arots at head-cfa.harvard.edu
gsh at usno.navy.mil
sla at ucolick.org
kanamitu at fukuoka-edu.ac.jp
teuben at astro.umd.edu
pgrosbol at eso.org
aah at nofs.navy.mil
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eric at cfa.harvard.edu
bob at ipac.caltech.edu
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swalton at galileo.csun.edu
mitsuda at astro.isas.ac.jp
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exr at NFRA.NL
daniel.durand at nrc.ca
rgm at ast.cam.ac.uk
mjc at star.rl.ac.uk
peter at astro.lu.se
pasian at ts.astro.it
guillote at iram.fr
gub at mpe-garching.mpg.de
pkalberl at astro.uni-bonn.de
jdp at vilspa.esa.es
francois at simbad.u-strasbg.fr
piskunov at inasan.rssi.ru

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