Expressing 2- and 3-D coordinates

[Rob Seaman]

I was hoping to ignore this conversation, oh well.

I question the assertion that there has been "trouble" with the STC  
specification - just the normal back and forth with any standard  
format or interface as it faces different stakeholders.  Arnold was  
responsive to our needs (basically for general targeting coordinates,  
not just RA and Dec) by producing the STCLite schema.  I gather you  
guys vetoed STCLite.  Really don't want to have the discussion to  
figure out if that is your mandate.  In any event, we (the VOEvent  
WG) have revisited the issue and have made one little suggestion - a  
suggestion that it appears other folks have previously made.  Would  
expect the discussion to continue until a consensus is formed.

It is a VO-wide issue, not specific to VOEvent, to assert a  
preference for schemata that are widely supported by parsers in the  
field.

Question whether "archival ingest, registry, retrieval, and query"  
cover all the bases of the VO.  Strongly agree with Alasdair that  
VOEvent will be an important facility of the VO as well as of the  
broader astronomical community - it's more than just "having  
Institution A alert Institution B that it saw something".  Question  
the wisdom of freezing the scope of the VO before the VO acquires a  
user base.  Didn't think "virtual" was intended to apply to its user  
community.

> The VO should provide a fairly exacting set of scientific  
> standards.  Projects  are free to  create copies  of the schema  
> and  knock out  parts and change required  elements to  optional   
> ones.

Suspect I'm not the only one to question the wisdom of this point of  
view.  Is this free-for-all really preferable to having just two  
standard choices of STC and a simplified STCLite?  For an important  
facility such as STC, it is quite reasonable to expect multiple  
stakeholders such as VOEvent to influence the development of a common  
standard.  Suggest this would be simplified in the future were a  
User's Guide to STC available.

Rob
seaman at noao.edu