VOTable 1.5 Working Draft (2023-09-13)

[Tom Donaldson]

Dear VOTable Enthusiasts,

On behalf of the Applications Working Group I’m pleased to announce the first Working Draft for VOTable version 1.5.  The document can be found here:  https://www.ivoa.net/documents/VOTable/20230913/ 


Summary of changes since version 1.4
--------------------------------------------------

- Schema changes:
--- COOSYS now has a refposition attribute analogous to TIMESYS
--- COOSYS system now uses vocabularies
--- ** COOSYS now allows FIELDref and PARAMref children for the specific purpose of building propagatable positions

- Clarifications/rewording on:
--- meaning of MIN/MAX value attributes for array types.
--- removing the "recommendation" to use xmlns to do utype prefix binding.
--- timescales for calendar epochs
--- ID/ref positioning advice

** - The COOSYS changes to handle propagation of positions are the most substantial proposed changes in this release.  For additional information, see:
- Discussion in the PR:  https://github.com/ivoa-std/VOTable/pull/40 
- Draft PR in Astropy showing how this could be used: https://github.com/astropy/astropy/pull/14992 

The changes since version 1.4 were all made via Github pull requests.  Some of these PRs contain useful discussion of the details so can be a useful reference for the ongoing Working Draft discussion.  The complete list of PRs included in this working draft can be found here:  https://github.com/ivoa-std/VOTable/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+milestone%3Av1.5 


Review and Comment
-----------------------------

Our job now is to review the document and propose/implement any changes needed.  The primary forum for discussion will be the Applications WG mailing list (apps at ivoa.net).  Github Pull Requests and Issues also offer a nice interface for discussion, so I recommend using those for discussing concrete or specific change proposals.  For example, instead of commenting on the mailing list that a particular paragraph should be different, submitting a Pull Request with the specific change in context can be a productive way to further the conversation.  If you have concrete proposals and would like help with creating a PR, just let us know on the Apps list and one of the editors will be happy to help.

Note that as new PRs are merged into the master branch, a preview PDF is available at https://github.com/ivoa-std/VOTable/releases/download/auto-pdf-preview/VOTable-draft.pdf    (also via the icon/badge at the top of the VOTable github repo README https://github.com/ivoa-std/VOTable#readme).


Known Open Issues
-------------------------

We're maintaining the list of known issues in Github.  This is the complete list of known issues that could still be addressed in version 1.5: https://github.com/ivoa-std/VOTable/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+milestone%3Av1.5 

Of those, only 2 are "must do" so have a label of "Priority: High":
- Update sections 7.1 and 7.2 to match schema changes for COOSYS (https://github.com/ivoa-std/VOTable/issues/41)
- Update the change log - section 9.4 (Differences Between Versions 1.4 and 1.5, https://github.com/ivoa-std/VOTable/issues/46)



Please review this Working Draft at your earliest opportunity.  I look forward to the discussion and suggestions on apps at ivoa.net as well as concrete proposals in Pull Requests (or new Github issues).

Best regards,
Tom