[iaufwg] approval of the 'FOREIGN' extension convention

[William Pence]

Mark Calabretta wrote:
> On Thu 2007/02/01 15:31:47 CDT, William Pence wrote
> in a message to: IAU-FWG <iaufwg at nrao.edu>
> 
> Bill,
> 
>> of the announcement, below).  Lucio Chiappette, Bob Hanisch, and Mark 
>> Calabretta suggested a few editorial changes which I did make to 
>> documents.  I plan to add this convention to the Registry web site at 
>> the end of next week if there are no further objections or comments 
>> before then.
> 
> A few changes were made in response to several minor points that I
> made, but for the other more substantial points there has as yet been
> no response.

I thought Doug Tody's response (on 12/12/06) to Lucio's comments could 
also apply to the issues you raised.  Doug's point (I think) was that 
this Foreign extension convention was developed some 8 years ago and, 
while the documentation admittedly contains some ambiguities and 
omissions, it is the best that we can expect to get without someone 
investing a lot more effort.  The original authors of this convention 
don't have much motivation to try to clarify the issues you raised 
(partly because this convention is not used very much) and even if they 
did, they may not agree on the best solution.   Even with these 
shortcomings, I think the document serves a useful purpose and is worth 
adding to the Registry in it's current state.  Perhaps if some project 
decides to reuse this convention in the future, then they will be 
motivated to clarify some of these issues and update the document.

Bill
-- 
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