[iaufwg] FITS panel recommendations; ready for review?

[William Pence]

Dear IAU FITS Working Group members,

I am pleased to report that the technical panel that was appointed 
earlier this year to draft recommendations for updating the FITS 
Standard document has completed its initial task.  The panel is 
recommending an extensive set of changes that will need to be made 
available for wider public comment (e.g., on the FITSBITS email list and 
the sci.astro.fits newsgroup) as the first step in the formal approval 
(and possible revision) process.

Before beginning the public comment period, however, the set of 
recommendations will be made available to you, the IAU FWG members, for 
about 2 weeks for an initial assessment, or sanity check.  The main 
purpose of this initial IAUFWG review is to answer these basic questions:

    Are the technical panel's recommendations ready for wider
    public review and comment?  If not, what deficiencies need
    to be fixed before starting the public review process?

Please only consider these broad questions at this time during your 
initial assessment of the material;  save your detailed comments about 
particular recommendations until the start of the public comment period.

The draft recommendations are available from this web page:
       http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_draft.html
which is hopefully self-explanatory.

If there are no objections from you in the next couple weeks, I hope to 
announce the start of the public comment period on FITSBITS by the end 
of July.   Until then, please keep this review material confidential to 
avoid confusion or premature debate by the wider FITS community.  I 
anticipate that the review period will extend for a couple months. 
Assuming that there will be a FITS Birds of a Feather session at the 
ADASS meeting in September, much of that session will probably be 
devoted to discussion of the proposed changes.

Finally, please let me know if you find any typographical or grammatical 
errors in these documents;  they can be fixed prior to the start of the 
public comment period.


Submitted on behalf of the FITS Technical Panel:
   William Pence
   Lucio Chiappetti
   Clive Page
   Richard Shaw
   Elizableth Stobie
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
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)