[iaufwg] convention or standard

[William Pence]

Since several of you have recently commented on this subject, here are some 
of my own thoughts on the difference between a "convention" and a "standard":

I view the Registry as simply a convenient central location for making the 
existence of a convention known to the wider FITS community.   Registering a 
convention does not give that convention any greater official approval 
status, and in particular, it does not mean that the IAU FWG endorses or 
recommends that the convention be more widely used.

A registered convention may be regarded to have more "credibility" than an 
unregistered convention because it has gone through the 30 day Public 
Comment process.  This should help ensure that the documentation about the 
convention meets a certain minimum level of clarity and completeness, and it 
should provide some assurance that the convention conforms to the 
requirements of the FITS Standard (or if it doesn't, then any violations 
should be clearly mentioned in the documentation).

There is no fundamental distinction between the conventions in the registry 
and the other similar sorts of conventions that are defined in the FITS 
Standard.  In either case, the convention may be very general or very 
narrowly focused for a particular application.  The only real distinction is 
that the IAUFWG has formally approved the conventions that are in the FITS 
Standard.  Since in the past there has not been any consistently applied 
procedure for approving new conventions into the Standard, there is a 
certain amount of serendipity, or historical accident as to which 
conventions ended up in the Standard, and those that did not.

In some cases, entering a convention into the registry will be the first 
step in applying for official approval by the IAUFWG to add the convention 
to the FITS Standard.  In other cases, the IAUFWG will not give any further 
consideration to the convention.  It is too early to know for sure, but my 
guess is that the IAU FWG will only consider a small minority of the 
conventions in the Registry for approval into the Standard, simply because 
the procedure is too cumbersome, and there is no real incentive to go 
through that whole process.  An alternative might be to create a 2-tier set 
of conventions in the registry by establishing a "Recommended" level of 
conventions that the IAUFWG feels are worthy of wider use, but I think many 
more conventions need to get entered into the registry before considering 
this or other alternatives.

Again, these are just my own thought on this...

Bill
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____________________________________________________________________
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)