MType list

[Thomas Boch]

Hi,

I really think having a SAMP-dedicated web site (samp.ivoa.net ??) would
be quite useful. John Taylor did a great job in setting up
plastic.sourceforge.net . It gave visibility, helped in promoting the
protocol and was a convenient central "repository" for documentation,
code examples, language-specific toolkits, etc.

As for the maintenance of the list of non-administrative MTypes, I'd
prefer to have a lightweight process letting us enough freedom to update
the list of MTypes whenever needed. Therefore I think we should avoid if
possible having to go through the recommendation process for each
update.

Cheers,

Thomas

Mark Taylor wrote:
> 
> Dear sampers,
> 
> The formal RFC period for the SAMP PR is now at an end, and the comments
> gathered look mostly quite positive.  There are a number of editorial
> items that (which??) I will address over the next day or two and issue
> a modified document.
> 
> One point which has been brought up by three of the reviewers is the
> arrangement for documenting the list of non-administrative MTypes,
> discussed in section 5.3.  This section is deliberately vague
> about where this list is kept, in order to allow flexibility about
> how/where MTypes are defined, and not to tie it to the SAMP document
> itself.  At present, the list of MTypes is on the
> not-particularly-easy-to-find wiki page at:
> 
>     http://www.ivoa.net/cgi-bin/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/SampMTypes
> 
> In practice, the only way that developers are likely to find this
> is by asking somebody who already knows where it is, which I admit
> is not very satisfactory.
> 
> Possible responses to this reviewers' comment could be:
> 
>    a) we don't yet have a settled idea of how/where these MTypes will be
>       kept; therefore insist on leaving it vague in the text
> 
>    b) add a reference in the text to the wiki page as the current MType
>       repository, with a note that in future some other URL or
>       arrangement may be used (wiki pages are typically not stable
>       enough to serve as long-term resources)
> 
>    c) agree to issue an IVOA Note containing the existing list of MTypes,
>       and fix the text to refer to this as something which will soon be
>       available
> 
>    d) agree to issue an IVOA Recommendation Track document along the
>       lines of the UCD1+ Controlled Vocabulary document, as suggested
>       by Jesus Salgado, and fix the text to refer to this as something
>       which will be available (once it's gone through the lengthy
>       recommendation process)
> 
>    e) come up with a location independent of the IVOA at which this list
>       could be stored, and fix the text to reference this URL.
>       This would most likely have to be a new domain, either bought
>       direct or hosted within some third-party project (sourceforge or
>       similar, as with the plastic.sourceforge.net site).
> 
>    f) something else?
> 
> Of these (e) would in some ways be the best, since a SAMP web site
> could also contain other useful content, such as short tutorial
> introductions complementing the Standard document itself, and
> lists of/links to applications which implement SAMP.  The PLASTIC
> sourceforge website was quite an asset in this way.  However, this
> option is also the most effort since it requires somebody to host
> a web site, or to arrange one which we can use.  I asked Bruno whether
> this sort of content would be welcome on the IVOA web site itself
> (e.g. www.ivoa.net/samp/) but, not unreasonably, he wasn't very keen,
> at least not without getting agreement from the IVOA Exec.
> Are there any volunteers for setting something like this up?
> I don't mind generating some of the content, but I'm not sure about
> how to go about acquiring an independent domain name and setting up
> a web server on it.  I note that samp.sourceforge.net is taken
> (Still Another Math Program), and in any case the site will not mostly
> be for hosting source code so sourceforge is probably not appropriate.
> 
> Failing that, I think that either (c) or, if allowed by the TCG, (a)
> would be probably the best solution.  It would be relatively easy
> to come up with the text for an IVOA Note, and this could be issued
> in the near future.  Updates of the Note could be issued as new
> MTypes came into use.  A discussion area (like the one on the wiki at
> present) would probably still be required, as a kind of "holding area" for
> MTypes to be included in the next update of the Note.  A disadvantage
> is that, although easier than Recommendation Track documents,
> the effort involved in issuing a Note still provides a bit of a barrier to
> making and publicisng small incremental changes in the list of known
> MTypes, which application authors might want to do, which is easy on
> a wiki (for related reasons I'm not keen on (d)).
> Another disadvantage is that if we decide at some time in the future
> to host the MType list on a web site or elsewhere, a SAMP document
> which pointed at a particular IVOA Note would become out of date - this
> is why I wanted to keep the two decoupled.
> 
> Does anybody have input on how we should respond to this comment?
> It would be good to have fairly prompt replies so we can continue the
> recommendation process without too much delay.
> 
> Mark
> 
> --
> Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
> m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/