[iaufwg] Registering the FOREIGN extension name

[Mark Calabretta]

On Thu 2006/10/05 14:22:44 -0400, William Pence wrote
in a message to: IAU-FWG <iaufwg at nrao.edu>

Bill,

>assign to each extension name.  Instead, I would rather scrap the 'Status' 
>value, and replace it with a paragraph of text that just describes as much 
>as is known about each extension type.   Any objections to this?  I 

I agree with the above.  However, in this discussion and the one on
fitsbits there seems to be some confusion between "convention" and
"standard".  In my opinion this is the only status that matters; there
needs to be a clear operational distinction between the two.  How about
this for starters:

  FITS "standards" define syntax and semantics that are intended to be
  supported by general-purpose FITS interpreting software (e.g. CFITSIO,
  WCSLIB, etc.).

  FITS "conventions" are based on FITS standards.  They add new
  semantics that are supported by special-purpose software but will
  not generally be understood by general-purpose FITS interpreters.
  
  FITS standards and conventions may define a keyword/keyvalue
  namespace that must not be reused with a different meaning in any
  conforming FITS files.

Cheers, Mark