[iaufwg] FITS Registry - ready to go public?

[William Pence]

I agree with most of Lucio's comments, below, and have updated the web pages 
at http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_registry.html accordingly.  A few specific 
comments are shown below

I'll wait another week before making any public announcement about the 
Registry, so there is still time to make further comments or suggestions.

Bill

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On 19 Jun 2006, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
> 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

Agreed.

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

Agreed.

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

Agreed, although it may not always be easy to remember who actually invented 
a particular convention many years after the fact.

>  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" ?

This text is for internal use on the registry web page to provide a short 
description of the convention.  In the future, we may also use this text in 
implementing a dictionary of all the keywords.  The text file itself need 
not be made directly available on the web 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 ?

This really depends on how the convention was defined.  In some cases the
developers of the convention thought about this and included a specific
keyword to flag that the convention is being used.  In many other cases, it 
is simply the presence of the 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 ?

The column limits keywords are usually used in pairs, but in principle, only 
one of the 4 keywords might be present.

> 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.

I think the submitted documentation for every convention should go through 
the same public comment process, but on a case-by-case basis we might 
consider granting an exception if the documentation has already gone through 
an equivalent peer review process.

We don't want to bombard the FITSBITS subscribers with too many postings per 
week, so there should probably be a limit on the maximum number of 
conventions that can be under public review at one time (perhaps 2 or 3 max).

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