VOEvent PR: Formal Request for Comments

[Roy Williams]

This message is to announce that the VOEvent specification is a  
Proposed Recommendation of the IVOA (International Virtual  
Observatory Alliance). The recommendation consists of a specification 
[1] and an accompanying XML Schema [2].  To quote from the IVOA  
standards process: "A Proposed Recommendation is believed to meet the  
relevant requirements of the Working Group's charter and any  
accompanying requirements documents, to represent sufficient  
implementation experience, and to adequately address dependencies  
from the IVOA technical community and comments from previous  
reviewers." The VOEvent WG, and those of us who have been working  
closely with the standard and its implementations believe that the  
packet specification is sufficiently mature for wide review with the  
objective of an international standard. There are now multiple  
implementations exchanging these packets, and we would like to  
continue building this network without fear of major changes.

How to comment:
As Working Group Chair, I call for a formal Request for Comment  
period of four weeks (ending August 9). Please use this time to read  
the specification and compare it with your future needs and plans,  
please write concerns to the comments page (see [3] below), and also  
to the WG mailing list (voevent at ivoa.net).

Thank you
Roy Williams
Chair, VOEvent Working Group

-----------------------------------------

[1] VOEvent Specification Proposed Recommendation
http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/PR/VOE/VOEvent-20060629.html

[2] VOEvent Schema Proposed Recommendation
http://www.ivoa.net/xml/VOEvent/VOEvent-v1.1.xsd

[3] VOEvent RFC Comment page
http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/VOEventRFC