[fitswcs] WCS documents

[Steve Allen]

On Thu 2001-10-11T18:03:50 -0400, William Pence hath writ:

> Does anyone else think this is a good idea??

I'm not convinced, and I'll express my doubts to spur discussion.

First of all, this is only a good idea if Eric Greisen thinks it is.

Doesn't this create a potentially ugly interdependency of approvals?
The WCS paper introduces the CUNIT keyword, and without the existence of
appendix B there must already be something in effect for Paper I to
reference.

The existence of Appendix B of paper I means that its provisions are
merely suggestions that need not be reviewed for absolute correctness.
I don't believe that anyone besides myself has used a machine parser
to prove that there are no ambiguities in the current Appendix B.  If
moved to the official standard it would need much more stringent
review.

On the other hand, everything in section 5.3 of the FITS standard is
on a recommended level, so perhaps I'm being too cautious.

> Peter Teuben wrote:

> > One thing I was wondering about is the academic possibility that there
> > is a units which requires a lot of characters, so we could run out of space.

This is simply going to happen, which is why the bracket convention
following the / in the comment field must remain a recommendation and
not a requirement.

--
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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