MType list

[Luigi Paioro]

Hi!

I agree with Mark and Thomas that having a web site it would be very 
useful and probably the best solution. Something directly connected with 
the IVOA site would be great (e.g. samp.ivoa.net) but as far as I 
understand it is not so simple to obtain. Alas samp.sourceforge.net is 
already used... so, why not using another free hosting service like 
http://www.t35.com or http://www.spaceports.com ? They give a limited 
space, but it should be enough...

Cheers,

   Luigi


Thomas Boch ha scritto:
> 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/

-- 

Luigi Paioro

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