[fitswcs] Re: WCS activity

[Steve Allen]

On Tue 2001-06-19T17:29:25 -0400, William Pence hath writ:
> Personally, I would favor a process that is closer to your Model A than to
> Model B.

I share a desire for a faster process, but there is something missing
in Model A.  I might be persuaded otherwise, but I believe that the
process of adding new elements to the standard *must* include a
constraint that there are at least two, independently-developed,
implementations which have demonstrated interoperability.  This, in
essence, forces the executive fiat of model A to include some of the
private negotiation of model B.

Some of the other proposals that Bill Pence mentions are relatively
simple and already satisfy the two-implementation rule.  WCS is
necessarily quite complex, and that complexity contributes much to the
problem of its standardization.

--
Steve Allen          UCO/Lick Observatory       Santa Cruz, CA 95064
sla at ucolick.org      Voice: +1 831 459 3046     http://www.ucolick.org/~sla
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