[iaufwg] approval of the 'FOREIGN' extension convention

[Lucio Chiappetti]

On Wed, 6 Dec 2006, William Pence wrote:

> A revised document that describes this convention (in MS Word and PDF
> formats) has been placed on the FITS registry web site at
> http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_registry.html.   

> Please review this document for yourself, and let me know if you have
> any further comments or objections about this convention;  

Surely we cannot have any objection about the convention, as the purpose 
of the registry is to track a convention which is : (a) in use ; (b) 
adequately documented.  I have however the following comments on the
document :

 - there are parts, like the entire section 4, or the explanatory
   text to FG_COMP. which are probably "over-documentation". I mean,
   they look like design notes, not usage notes.
   
   Also I'm slightly confused by the usage of past, present and future 
   tenses. I assumed that the FOREIGN convention was defined and 
   implemented long ago for "its own purposes" and then "frozen" (was it a 
   wrong impression ?), so it looks strange to "reserve" a keyword for 
   future use, or to write section 4 as requirements for something to be 
   written.

 - I have not retained a copy of the original document, and I can't
   remember if keyword FG_MTYPE was in there. If it was not, it would
   be strange to add it now. If it was, it seems strange to make
   reference to a MIME type, when probably this concept did not exist
   when the convention was first defined. Sort of "a posteriori history
   editing" ... 

   But I might have understood the time frame wrongly.

 - very minor : probably the 1-80 alignment "ruler" in section 2 is
   unnecessary or redundant

None of the above comments precludes the acceptance of the convention.

-- 
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Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)
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