[iaufwg] Revised FITS Registry Proposal

Lucio Chiappetti lucio at lambrate.inaf.it
Thu May 11 05:53:24 EDT 2006


On Tue, 9 May 2006, William Pence wrote:

> future.  I've revised the proposed rules governing the registry at
> http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/iaufwg/fits_registry.html.  

I've read the new proposal, and it's mostly fine with me, particularly the 
procedural parts (section 4 and 5).

I have a few comments on the documents described in section 3.

- for the "main" document in item 1, there is of course the "picky"
  question of supporting or not a proprietary format (MS Word) vs
  other. I suggest that documents can be accepted IN INPUT in those
  format (one could also add OpenOffice sxw, but it's so easy to
  generate the PDF straight from OO that it's not necessary), but
  they will be made available in the archive ONLY as text or PDF
  (I was once a keen supporter of ps vs PDF, but if one now has to
  cut for simplicity, PDF is more obvious) ... of course if the
  archive mantainer agrees to make the necessary conversion.

- for the sample FITS files (item 3) one could also consider an URL
  pointing to the site of the proponent (specially for intrinsically
  bulky files)

> While I realize that this version does not completely address all the 
> issues that have been raised (especially regarding a XML definition of 
> the convention),

- this is covered by the interim item 4 ...
  ... but I believe also its current simpler replacement (item 2)
  needs some standardization. I mean, we should at least provide a
  recommended template for the text file in item 2 ... specially if
  we want it also machine readable in some automated way. 

Another topic is : how do we start ? We just wait for inputs to come in, 
or do we send "individual solicitations" to the authors of main known 
existing conventions ?

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