[iaufwg] Final FITS review comments

[William Pence]

Dear IAU-FWG members,

A number of good ideas have been floated here on how to address the 
issue of documenting past changes to the definition of FITS;  Mark's 
email yesterday is a useful step forward.  However it seems clear to me 
that reaching a final agreement will still require a significant amount 
of time.  Each of us have somewhat different views, and it will take 
time to reach a consensus, especially when the discussions have to be 
done via email across scattered timezones.  We will also surely want to 
move this discussion to the wider FITS community on the FITSBITS email 
list to take advantage of the experience of the many FITS software 
developers on that list who have had real world experience dealing with 
old FITS files.

I agree with the other recent postings here that we should not hold up 
the final approval of the draft FITS Standard over this one issue which 
is largely peripheral to all the other important enhancements in this 
new version.  Consequently, I plan to press ahead with the formal vote 
on the 3.0 draft FITS Standard as it now stands (with the 4 corrections 
noted previously).  This vote will be taken with the clear understanding 
that further work on documenting past changes to FITS will be done. 
Even if no other volunteers step forward, I can promise to at least 
gather what existing material is available and make it accessible in 
some coherent fashion on the FITS Support Office Web site.  I think it 
would be unwise to try to make any last minute changes to the current 
document on a piecemeal basis without involving the wider FITS 
community.  Any hasty changes could have unanticipated consequences and 
could turn out to be not entirely compatible with whatever we finally 
decide to do in the end.

I propose to call for a vote on the draft Standard in 2 weeks time, on 
April 30th.  According to our voting rules, each of the IAU-FWG members 
will then have 3 weeks to send in a vote of 'Yes', 'No', or 'Abstain' on 
whether to accept this latest draft as the new official FITS Standard.

Our voting rules require that the chairman must first ask if any of you 
are likely to vote 'No' on this question.  As you know, any 'No' votes 
would force a temporary halt to the voting process, to allow time to try 
to reach some acceptable compromise.  So, if you think you would cast a 
'No' vote, you should send a private email to me detailing your 
objections, so that we can try to deal with the issue prior to the 
official vote.

Bill
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____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence                       William.Pence at nasa.gov
NASA/GSFC Code 662       HEASARC        +1-301-286-4599 (voice)
Greenbelt MD 20771                      +1-301-286-1684 (fax)