[wfc] FITS MIMIE type - Committee Poll

Mon Jun 21 15:54:58 EDT 2004

Dear WFC members,

As you can see from the attached message, Bill Pence as chair of the
IAU FITS Working Group has called for reginal committee straw votes on
the FITS MIME proposal.

Please let me know by 17:00 EDT Monday 28 June 2004 if you are
contemplating a NO vote on this proposal.

I do encourage you to tell me if you plan to vote yes, but it is
absolutely essential to let me know if you intend to vote NO.

Information on the proposal, from an earlier message:

> The latest 17-May-2004 draft of the MIME type proposal is available for
> comment at http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/fits/mime/.  The draft is available
> there in postscript, PDF, and plain text formats.  Listings of the
> differences with the previous 2 drafts of the document are also available.
> 
> Please submit your comments here on the sci.astro.fits newsgroup, or on the
> related FITSBITS moderated mail list.  If you previously submitted comments
> that have not been incorporated in this latest draft, and if you feel that
> they still need to be addressed, then please submit the comments again.
> 
> The previous informal discussions about this FITS MIME proposal on the
> 'fitsmime' mail list at NRAO may be viewed in the archive at
> http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/pipermail/fitsmime/.  Other related postings here
> on the FITSBITS mail list may be viewed in the archive at
> http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/pipermail/fitsbits/.  In particular, see the
> postings in December 2002, June 2003, and March 2004,

Thank you,

  - Arnold

>----- Forwarded message from William Pence -----

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Subject: [Iaufec] FITS MIMIE type - Committee Polls
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Dear IAU-FITS Executive Committee members:

The formal 4-week Public Comment Period for the FITS MIME type proposal 
ended last week with only one comment being submitted.  I am not surprised 
by this low response because this proposal had already been extensively 
discussed on the dedicated FITSMIME mail exploder over the past several 
years and on the main FITSBITS/sci.astro.fits mail list, especially during 
December 2002, June 2003, and March 2004.   The one new comment was from Tim 
Pearson, who argued for eliminating the "image/fits" MIME type and for using 
"application/fits" for all FITS files.  Steve Allen posted a reply to this 
comment on 17 June that explained some of the reasons why the authors of the 
proposal feel that registering "image/fits" is appropriate.

The next step in the IAUFWG approval procedure (see 
http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/iaufwg/iaufwg_rules.html) is for the Executive 
Committee to decide whether or not to call for votes by the 3 regional FITS 
committees.  Before calling for a vote, the rules state that the committee 
chairmen should conduct a confidential straw poll of their members to see if 
any one is not ready to cast a vote or is considering voting against the 
proposal, and if so, why.  I therefore call on the 3 chairman, (Arnold, 
Osamu, and Preben) to conduct this straw poll of your committee members (not 
the actual vote!), and report the results back to me by Wednesday, June 30. 
  I will similarly conduct a confidential poll of the IAU-FWG members to see 
if any of them are considering a negative vote.  If the results of these 
straw polls are favorable, then I hope we can call for the Regional 
Committees to actually vote on the MIME type proposal sometime in early July.

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

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----- End of forwarded message from William Pence -----
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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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