[iaufwg] INHERIT convention

[Doug Tody]

Hi Bill -

This is fine with me.  The only thing I might suggest, is that there is
no reason to discourage a final round of comments on the IAUFWG list.
That is, we could have the initial discussion on FITSBITS, to see
what the community thinks, plus the possibility of some summary or
concluding comments from the IAU group.  We might ask though, that
any suggestions for revisions to a specification occur early on in
this process, in the FITSBITS forum, and that if there is a concluding
IAUFWG comment period, this would be based on the final documentation.

 	- Doug


On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, William Pence wrote:

> Walter Jaffe wrote:
>> This begs the question of whether the expertise present in the iaufwg
>> can be used in fact to improve the convention.  While this is probably
>> desirable, I would separate this from the reviewing procedure.  We might
>> attach a blog and a revision history to each convention.  In the first
>> case people both in- and outside the iaufwg can make suggestions for
>> improvements and point out hazards inherent in the convention. The
>> second would document those changes that the authors have made.
>
> I think the most important thing we can do (and it is also fairly easy
> to implement) is to capture all the discussions about a convention and
> make them easily available to future users from the registry web page.
> Since virtually all the discussions about a particular convention takes
> place during the 'public comment' period on FITSBITS, it is probably
> overkill to set up a separate wiki or blog for this purpose.  Instead,
> at the end of the public comment period, I plan to append all the
> relevant emails from FITSBITS (and the IAUFWG list if appropriate) into
> a single text file that will be available from the registry web page
> (probably as a link labeled 'Comments and recommendations about this
> convention').  If more discussion about that convention occurs at a
> later date, then I will  manually add them to the 'Comments and
> recommendations' text file for that convention.  I don't think this will
> happen very often, so it shouldn't require much effort on my part.
>
> For this to work efficiently, it is important that everyone here make
> any comments that they have about the convention during the 'Public
> Comment' period on FITSBITS, and not wait until the last minute to raise
> any new issues here on the IAUFWG email list just before the IAUFWG
> formally approves adding the convention to the registry.
>
> I'll just add that I think it is perfectly acceptable to discuss
> implementation issues or criticisms, or suggestions for improving the
> convention during the public comment period on FITSBITS.  When we first
> set up the registry, I thought that these sorts of discussions should be
> considered 'off topic' and should be discouraged, but now I've come to
> believe that these sorts of wide-ranging discussions are health and
> useful and may lead to the development of even better conventions in the
> future.   These discussions should not affect whether the convention
> gets added into the registry, however, since the main purpose of the
> registry is to simply document how existing FITS conventions work.
>
> Bill
> -- 
> ____________________________________________________________________
> 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)
>
>
>
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