[iaufwg] convention or standard

[Mark Calabretta]

On Fri 2006/10/06 12:47:42 -0400, William Pence wrote
in a message to: IAU-FWG <iaufwg at nrao.edu>

Bill,

>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.

I don't disagree with what you are saying, but attempting to draw a
distinction between "conventions in the registry" and "conventions that
are defined in the FITS Standard" (I assume you mean TABLE, IMAGE, and
BINTABLE) simply confuses the issue.

The "conventions in the standard" are no longer "conventions", they're
now standards.  Referring to them as conventions, however qualified,
blurs the distinction between the two.

In any case, as Don points out, the standard is more likely to be
derived from conventions rather than simply incorporating them.

>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 

That's an indictment on the FITS standards process.  That process is the
IAUFWG's responsibility.  Therefore it's an indictment on us.

Regards, Mark