On the "when" and "where"

[Alasdair Allan]

Rob Seaman wrote:
> Roy Williams writes:
>> I quite agree with you that simplicity is not enough, and that the 
>> VOEvent schema should include a comprehensive space-time 
>> specification such as STC. But at the same time, I do not want to 
>> lose simplicity.
>
> Take a look at example B.4 from 
> http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/PR/STC/STC-20050315.html

I must admit to not reading the document fully, I flipped ahead to the 
XML examples because I wanted to get a feel for the amount of work 
needed to implement a parser/generator that would minimally comply with 
the spec. It looks like a seriously large amount of work...

How much of this is useful but optional? In the simplest possible case 
if I just want to specify an RA, Dec and time of observation (UTC) 
without quoting errors or defining frames. What's the simplest document 
you can get away with?

If it can't be cut down to about 10 lines of XML for the simplest case 
(including all the angle brackets) I think there is a problem here, are 
there any assumptions made at all if things are left out of the XML 
representation?

Al.
-- 
Dr. A. Allan, School of Physics, University of Exeter