[fitswcs] WCS documents

[William Pence]

Since Eric would rather not pull the units conventions out of Paper I into a separate
proposal, I withdraw my suggestion.  That's OK with me, and we'll just proceed with
the original '[ ]' convention proposal separately as planned. 

To respond to one other issue Eric raised (and apologies for taking up bandwidth on
this WCS discussion group):

Eric Greisen wrote:
> 
> A further point.  I do not like the community to address comments to
> "change this subsection of the NOST".  It should propose whatever is a
> good idea and then the re-convened NOST should incorporate, re-word,
> merge as it sees fit.  That process will undoubtedly take Appendix B
> and the [] and put it in the suitable section.  But we are outsiders
> to that process at the moment.

This is an important issue that I hope Don, or one of the other FITS committee
officers can clarify.  The pending '[ ]' keyword units proposal recommends a small,
specific change to the current wording of the NOST document.  I think it is important
to do this in this case, and probably in some other small proposals that may be
submitted in the near future, so that the FITS committees know exactly what it is
they are voting on.  The precise wording is very important.  As I understand it, if
the 3 regional committees and the IAU FITS WG all approve this proposal, then it
becomes part of the Standard and the NOST has nothing to do with it except to
incorporate that change without modification into the next revision.

If we take the alternate route and the FITS committees all just approve the proposal
as being a 'good idea' but leave the precise wording up to the NOST committee, then
the FITS committees have to re-vote on the proposal all over again to approve the
NOST's wording.  This double jeopardy will make it very difficult to get a final
resolution of these small proposals.

So my questions for Don are: Is it appropriate to make proposals to the FITS regional
committees to specifically modify the wording of the NOST Standard document?  If such
a proposal is passed by all the FITS committees, what role, if any, does the NOST
have in incorporating the approved proposal into the Standard document?

-Bill
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence                          pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov
NASA/GSFC Code 662         HEASARC         +1-301-286-4599 (voice)     
Greenbelt MD 20771                         +1-301-286-1684 (fax)