[wfc] Request for consent to request title for MIME proposal

[Arnold Rots]

Dear WFC,

As you probably noticed, Steve Allen has perfected the draft for the
FITS MIME RFC and would like to ask WFC consent to move to the next
stage which is to request a title for the draft.

He writes:

  In accordance with
	http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt
  at this time I would like to ask the WFC to give its consent before
  I ask the IETF to assign a title to the FITS MIME Internet Draft.
  I need merely send them a suggested title and the abstract.
  Getting a title does not commit the FITS community to following through
  with submitting a document, but it does start a 6 month clock ticking.

If we grant this consent, he will ask the IETF for a title and when
that is granted I suspect Steve will be back to ask us to ask the IAU
FWG for approval to submit the draft to the RFC editor.

This is different from our usual voting procedures since it does not
ask for approving a proposed FITS standard.  I will assume that a
simple majority of votes cast will suffice for the present request.
At this time I am asking whether there is any comment on, or objection
to, consenting with Steve's request for assigning a title.

Unless there a is strong outcry against this, I am planning to call
for a vote in a few days.  At that time I will also propose the rules
for the next round.

Cheers,

  - Arnold

----- Forwarded message from Steve Allen -----

From: Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.org>

I have tidied up the draft text of the MIME proposal for FITS so that
it conforms exactly to the format required by the Internet Engineering
Standards Group.  It now has a table of contents for its 20 pages of
ASCII text.  During the past few months the only content changes have
been minor clarifications of wording in response to members of the
FITSMIME mailing list.

The main web page is
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/fits/mime/
The draft itself, comments on the draft, and an outline of the process
for becoming an RFC are linked there.

I would now like to receive comments from FITSBITS/sci.astro.fits

I am also about to ask the AAS WGAS FITS Committee for approval to get
an official title for the Internet Draft which would become the RFC.

I believe it is reasonable to set a goal of submitting the draft to
the RFC editor in late June or early July.  By the end of June I
expect that the process of reviewing and tweaking the text will be
complete.  Then I will ask the WGAS FITS Committee to request approval
from the IAUFWG for submitting the text to the RFC editor.

--
Steve Allen          UCO/Lick Observatory       Santa Cruz, CA 95064
sla at ucolick.org      Voice: +1 831 459 3046     http://www.ucolick.org/~sla
PGP: 1024/E46978C5   F6 78 D1 10 62 94 8F 2E    49 89 0E FE 26 B4 14 93

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----- End of forwarded message from Steve Allen -----
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Arnold H. Rots                                Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory                tel:  +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67                              fax:  +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138                             arots at head-cfa.harvard.edu
USA                                     http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
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