[iaufwg] New draft FITS Standard

[William Pence]

Dear IAU FITS Working Group members,

The FITS technical panel has finished reviewing all the comments that 
were received during the public comment period on the proposed new FITS 
Standard document and has produced a revised draft.  Three new documents 
are now available at http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_draft.html:

1.  A summary of all the public comments (grouped into 38 topics) and 
the technical panel's response to each one.

2.  A revised draft of the FITS Standard (dated November 9).

3.  A color coded differences document that shows all the changes from 
the previous July draft.

The next step in the official review and approval process of this 
updated Standard document will be to send it to the 4 regional FITS 
committees for their comments.  First, however, please review the 
panel's response to each of the comments (in the first document, above) 
and scan through the color coded differences document to make sure that 
you are comfortable with all the changes.  Keep in mind that you will 
still have another chance to review this document during the formal 
IAUFWG review, after the regional FITS committees have looked at it, but 
it would be good to know of any significant issues that you have with 
the document now rather than later.

I propose that we allow 2 weeks, until November 28th, for the IAU FWG 
members to review these documents.  Assuming no major issues are raised, 
we should be able to send this material to the regional committees for 
their approval by early December.

The FITS Technical Panel
   Bill Pence
   Lucio Chiappetti
   Clive Page
   Dick Shaw
   Betty Stobie