[iaufwg] FITS Registry - ready to go public?

[Lucio Chiappetti]

On Fri, 16 Jun 2006, William Pence wrote:
> is sufficient to get started with.  Does anyone have any more 
> suggestions (or objections) before we make this public?

A few suggestions based on the example you inserted (some are general, 
some might be specific to the example) :

 1) each convention should have a "nickname" or short name, or acronym
    or a quick way to identify it (e.g. "the Greenbank convention" or
    "the TDIM convention") or title, which should appear in the table

 2) each convention (specially the past ones) should have a starting
    date of usage (not just the date of submission to the registry)

 3) the document/s supporting the convention should be dated and bear
    author names or organizational affiliations (your TDIM document is
    "anonymous")

 4) what is the purpose of the "short text document" at item 2 of
    the "submittal process" ?  I do not see it for the TDIM convention.
    Is it missing, or item 2 means just "the short text which will be
    entered on the html page" ?

 5) does a convention need some sort of "internal signature". I mean,
    how can one user identify at the first glance that a file is
    following a specific convention ?  In some cases I expect to find
    one keyword which tells that the file follows a convention, or
    a superfamily of conventions (like your HDUCLASS= 'OGIP    ' ?).

    In other cases the signature is simply the presence of some
    particular keywords ?

 5a) for instance what identifies the TDIM convention ? The presence
     of all 4 keywords TDMIN TDMAX TLMIN TLMAX ? For at least one
     column or all columns ? Or are just the TD kwds enough ? Or the
     TL ? or even just a single one ?

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, William Pence wrote:

> There is no question that the Greenbank convention, and many other 
> conventions that have been in widespread use for many years, should be 
> entered into the Registry, however, I think it would be good for all the 
> conventions to go though the same public comment and review procedure as 

The good is to "test and train" the procedure. The bad is that people on 
FITSBITS could be bored by a massive injection of review requests for 
"well known" conventions.

> A second reason for not having a special "grandfathered" category of 
> conventions is it would be complicated deciding which conventions qualify 
> for this distinction. 

One could considered that the IAUFWG, or the IAUFWG Executive, or other 
subset in charge of the Registry could decide, for OBVIOUS "grandfathered" 
conventions, to bypass the public comment period, and just run the 
IAUFWG-internal approval procedure.

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