[fitswcs] WCS documents

[Don Wells]

Bill etal, 

William Pence writes:
 > ..  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. ...

My interpretation of the 1988 IAU General Assembly [GA] resolution
which created the IAU-FWG is that an IAU-FWG vote _immediately_
changes the official FITS standard, without any need for ratification
by the next IAU-GA (although it will often be politically useful to
create suitable GA resolutions which note recent IAU-FWG actions and
which recommend adherance by all astronomers).  I.e., your units
proposal will, if adopted by IAU-FWG, immediately modify the
interpretation of the NOST FITS standard as published in A&A.

 > 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?

Yes, of course it is appropriate to pass resolutions which modify the
NOST document.  For example, the IAU-FWG resolution which approved the
NOST FITS Standard document on 2000-10-12 (one year ago today)
specified an interpretation of the first paragraph of Chapter_7 of the
document, and directed the next NOST panel to modify the next NOST
FITS Standard document accordingly.

We expect the NOST Technical Panel to make various editorial changes.
For example, the sections which your units proposal cites might well
be renumbered in the next version, so we are certainly not going to
vote on the exact strings '5.3' and '5.1.2.3' which appear in your
units text. Also, if some detail of specification happens to be
omitted in the current units proposal, but the omission is detected by
the NOST Panel or its reviewers, we expect that the NOST Panel will
make the appropriate change to the units text. More generally, we
expect that the Panel will modify text as needed to produce a
self-consistent body of rules expressed in a uniform style. In any
case, the vote on the next NOST document will supercede the vote on
the current units proposal, just as the vote on the current NOST
document superceded the votes which adopted the prior published papers
as the FITS standard.

-Don    [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                +1-434-296-0277
  520 Edgemont Road,   Charlottesville, Virginia       22903-2475 USA