[iaufwg] Registering the FOREIGN extension name

[Mark Calabretta]

On Thu 2006/10/05 21:01:35 CST, Doug Tody wrote
in a message to: Mark Calabretta <mcalabre at atnf.csiro.au>
and copied to: William Pence <pence at milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov>, IAU-FWG <iaufwg at nr
     ao.edu>

>process - conventions should be much easier to define.  How widely
>implemented a standard or convention is, is an entirely different
>matter, and is up to the implementors.   - Doug

I may stand to be corrected, but I think in practice that conventions
defined by one package have not generally been taken up by others.  For
example, conventions defined by the cfitsio authors (cfitsio manual,
Sects. 5.6, 5.8, & Chap. 12) have stayed pretty much within cfitsio.
Because of cfitsio's general nature this is one case where you might
have expected them to leak out.

The AIPS coordinate convention may be the one exception but that was
special in a historical way and anyway there were variations in the way
it was implemented, which is another way that conventions may differ
from standards.

Cheers, Mark