|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
[fitsbits] Draft WCS Paper V: Time
On Apr 6, 2009, at 6:41 PM, Robert Hanisch wrote:
This reference is a tribute to Peter Bunclark, I think, and in his memory it would be nice to let it stand. That is certainly sufficient justification. FITS and ADASS and IVOA are certainly not overflowing with whimsy - a little poetry (Latin or otherwise) can't hurt. As a standards document I don't quite see how it helps anything, That said, Astronomy is a field where the actions of the Vatican from the 16th century are still in force. A normative standard should cite normative references. It seems likely that nothing has superseded the 1582 reference. In addition to whimsy and poetry, this is likely pedantically correct as a fundamental reference. unless we had a FITS file somehow documenting the supernova of 1054, or something like that. It is not unlikely that such a file, for instance a table or simulation, would be created and used within a research or outreach context. The standard needs to support such cases. There is no irony here. But for such a thing, we do not need to understand TAI or whatever. I'm not quite sure what you are saying. Astronomy is broad in space and deep in time. It may seem quaint for FITS to wrestle with complex issues of timekeeping in a nominally historical context, but FITS should be applicable for a variety of proleptic use cases. The reach of FITS should exceed our grasp. The usual thing is to let the authors publish their version, and then the FITS commandos come in and distill it down into the formal language of the standard. It would be nice if this translation could be an identity matrix. For these issues the authors are the FITS commandos. If you are suggesting that papers I-V are not normative, I'm not sure I agree with that interpretation. Surely for a number of WCS issues the "formal language of the standard" still resides in the published papers? Arnold has already chastised me for finding the keywords to be obtuse and inconsistent, and he is relying on history in his rebuttal. OK, we messed up before, and to be consistent, we will mess up again. Doesn't matter, it is just a list of keywords. I just find it strange to represent "time" as T, TIM, or TIME. Or "center" as CEN, CENT, or CENTE. We accepted this before, so I guess we go with it. If usage governs then the biggest issue is DATE-OBS. Many millions of files (and more every day) contain a DATE-OBS that expresses only a date. Any standard is a trade-off between the descriptive (usage) and the proscriptive (newly conceived architecture). I would suggest that the paper should express the minimal set of keywords needed to address the full set of astronomical use cases. These will prescribe the desired new usage. In addition, the paper should describe the range of usage known to exist in the community. Ideally there will be (some) overlap, but historical precedence shouldn't overrule improving timekeeping in the standard. Whether keyword names are truncated is only a minor aspect of this. Rather, tell people what their institutions ought to be doing, and also how to interpret what other institutions ought not to be doing. Rob |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
[fitsbits] Draft WCS Paper V: Time | Steve Allen | FITS | 0 | April 7th 09 06:40 AM |
[fitsbits] Draft WCS Paper V: Time | Steve Allen | FITS | 0 | April 7th 09 05:40 AM |
[fitsbits] Draft WCS Paper V: Time | Robert Hanisch | FITS | 0 | April 7th 09 02:41 AM |
[fitsbits] Draft WCS Paper V: Time | Arnold Rots | FITS | 0 | April 2nd 09 10:57 PM |