GRBs retractions - Param or value?

[Alasdair Allan]

Petr Kubanek wrote:
> Alasdair Allan wrote:
>> ..
>> For the most part they're astronomers who will view the messages  
>> as  text, plain ASCII text. If 1 in 10 end users actually use an  
>> XML  parser
>
> VOEvent is designed to integrate GCN 2, right? GCN is used by many  
> (seems > 50) telescopes at the world and it works - with plain  
> binary UDP packets, which content is well maintained and DOCUMENTED.

...and you're point is what? What makes you think the <Group> and  
<Param>s used by various authors won't be documented? How does a  
schema help? It doesn't help me very much to know that <trigger_num>  
is an integer, the semantic content of the tag is hidden.

> I count to that 1 in 10 end user which will need to parse VOEvent  
> using XML parser and will need to decide based on content of  
> VOEvent message what do to - if the observer have to decide, it  
> will be too late - we speak about reaction time in seconds to GRB  
> alert, not minutes before some observer parse it, retype  
> coordinates to telescope and finally observe it. Not to mention  
> fact, that we run instalations without any observer at all.

Err, yes. Only one of the telescopes on the eSTAR network has an  
observer in the loop. I, or rather the software, does autonomous  
observations on multiple telescopes distributed around the world.  
None of my stuff is designed to do hand managed by a human, in real  
or any other time,

I really don't seem you problem. The eSTAR system is doing GCN follow- 
up right now, when my GCN feed to Exeter got blocked by firewall my  
software dropped back to using the VOEvent feed of GCN messages from  
LANL. Autonomously, without me interfering. Although I did have a  
brief panic about it at the time.

Why on Earth do you seem convinced that a human has to look at the  
VOEvent message before it can be interpreted? Retype co-ordinates?  
Err, no, that's not what's happening now. WHy do you think that's the  
future?

Al.