[iaufwg] Registering the FOREIGN extension name

[Lucio Chiappetti]

On Thu, 5 Oct 2006, Robert Hanisch wrote:

> latent cans of worms!

Or cans of latent worms ? :-)

I've just managed to go through the previous fitsbits correspondence, when 
Bob's message came in, and since it's quite easy to reply I go first with 
this. 

I agree with most of what he says, only I'd try to keep the status levels 
to a minimum, and therefore to consider "Reserved" as implicit in all 
other levels, so I'll rewrite Bob's list in a different order and with 
different coding :

> Thus, I would suggest the following status levels, in increasing level of
> acceptance/recognition.
> 
> R       Reserved.  A document and implementations may or may not exist.
> D       Draft (Reserved name is implicit).
          i.e. a detailed document exists but no implementation yet
> C       Conforming but not widely used or recognized beyond a single
>         organization or software system.
          I'd add here too (Reserved name is implicit) 
> S       Standard.

So the progress is from R (just a name) to D (name and document) then C 
(name, document and implementation) then S (standard).

Maybe C should be called A (active), not that I care on the name, but C 
for Conforming makes me thin that somebody has verified conformity ... and 
if so should this not occur as soon as a document is received ?

Perhaps one may want to introduce a further transient status between C and 
S, i.e. "being considered for promotion to standard level" ?

I note that On Mon, 2 Oct 2006, William Pence wrote:

> From my own perspective I would hope that the number of new extension 
> types that are created can be kept to a minimum because of the impact 
> that it has on existing software and the added confusion that it can 
> cause for FITS users.

which I endorse, particularly for what concerns the Standard extensions 
(for the other there is nothing we can do but accept a name reservation)


Now I guess you'd have to wait until tomorrow to get my replies on 
fitsbits. Time to go home here. 

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