[wfc] Call for WGAS FITS Committee vote on bintable proposals

[Arnold Rots]

As there were no reported objections to holding a vote on the 2 FITS
binary table proposals, the chair of the IAU FITS Working Group has
called on each of the 4 regional FITS committee chairmen to conduct a
vote by their respective committee members.

I hereby call on the members of the WGAS FITS Committee (the North
American committee) to cast their votes by 15 February 2005.

The current draft of the proposals may be viewed at

http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/bintable_proposals.html

Each proposal should be voted on separately, as follows:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Proposal 1, to incorporate the Variable Length Array convention into the
FITS Standard (choose 1):

  [ ]  Yes - I agree
  [ ]  No  - I disagree, because... (give reasons)
  [ ]  Abstain - I have no preference

Proposal 2, to incorporate the TDIMn multidimensional array convention into
the FITS Standard (choose 1):

  [ ]  Yes - I agree
  [ ]  No  - I disagree, because... (give reasons)
  [ ]  Abstain - I have no preference

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If there are any suggestions for small editorial changes to these proposals,
they should be forwarded along with the votes, and they will be considered
by the IAU FITS Working Group before they cast a final vote on the proposals.

Finally, as a reminder, here are the official rules for conducting and
interpreting the outcome of the vote:

   Once the Executive Committee (EC) has requested that the regional
   FITS committees vote on the proposal, the chairman of each committee
   will be responsible for collecting the votes via email within the
   alloted time period (normally 3 weeks). The committee members may
   vote either 'Yes, in favor', 'No, not in favor', or 'Abstain'. Any
   member who fails to cast a vote will be counted as voting to 'Abstain'.
   Those voting 'No' should give the reason(s) why they feel the proposal
   is not acceptable. In order for a regional committee to approve a
   proposal a quorum of at least 2/3 of the committee members must have
   voted either 'Yes' or 'No', and at least 2/3 of those votes must be
   'Yes'.  After collecting all the votes, the regional committee chairman
   will forward the vote tallies (without associated names), along with
   the reasons for any 'No' votes, to the EC.

Please forward me your votes within the allotted period.
Cheers,

  - Arnold Rots

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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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