[iaufwg] Final FITS review comments

[William Pence]

Arnold,

Let's try to keep this simple.  As you say, my latest proposal to vote 
on the current draft as it stands will accomplish the same result as 
what you suggest.  IF anyone feels compelled to vote 'No' on approving 
the current draft FITS standard as it currently stands, on it own 
merits, please send me an email stating why, and we will then try to 
deal with that issue.

Note that there is no need to vote on my previous proposal to form a 
committee to compile the previous changes to FITS, and I withdraw that 
proposal.  That activity *is* going to happen now in some form or other, 
so there is no need to vote on it.  Even if there are no other 
volunteers, I will work on it as time permits.  I fully expect that the 
IAU FWG will eventually agree on some mechanism for adding this change 
history into the FITS Standard document, perhaps as an appendix and 
maybe as a few footnotes.   However, this will certainly take at least 
several months, and possibly much longer, to sort everything out.  In 
the meantime, however, I cannot see any reason not to proceed with the 
vote on the existing draft.   It is in the best interests of the FITS 
community to make this new version available as soon as possible.

When considering this issue, keep in mind that there are other topics 
not covered in the current FITS Standard document, beside a description 
of the change history, that would be nice to have in the document but 
are not there at present.  I won't enumerate them for fear that someone 
will insist that we implement them before voting on the document. :-) If 
we insist on having an absolutely perfect document that covers every 
possible FITS issue and topic before voting on it, then it will never 
get approved.

Bill

Arnold Rots wrote:
> Bill,
> 
> May I suggest an amendment to the voting procedure you just outlined?
> In keeping with time-honored parliamentary tradition, one would vote
> in succession on all three proposals, the farthest-reaching one first.
> We cannot do that because of the clause on no-votes, but it seems to
> me that the straw vote on no-votes that you just outlined on the three
> proposals would achieve more or less the same result.
> 
> The order of the three proposals would be:
> 
> Motion 1: put adoption off by, say, 6 months in order to add an audit
> trail appendix to the document
> 
> Motion 3: vote on adoption immediately, but put a reference in to an
> audit trail that will be constructed and maintained online
> 
> Motion 2: vote on adoption immediately, without any audit trail
> appendix
> 
> 
> I would suggest that you ask who would likely cast a no-vote on any of
> these proposals and move the first one, in the order 1-3-2, that has
> no no-votes on to the proper voting process.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>   - Arnold
> 
> 
> William Pence wrote:
>> 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
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
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)