VOEvent References

[Frederic V. Hessman]

Ah, when Norman waxes eloquent ....     He's usually right at the end,  
but so was Cassandra.

> The MIME types don't _have_ to be standardised ones, of course.   
> It's not pretty, but you could say
>
>    mimetype='text/x-sextractor-catalogue'

This is not just "not pretty", this is totally useless.   After  
finally getting the IVOA is acknowledge that there is only 1  
reasonable way to maintain a list of terms (and MIME is exactly that),  
we go back to uncontrollable ASCII?

I'm not against MIME, it's just not enough to be able to specify  
formats other than those in common usage.   A  
CelestiaObjectDescriptionFile is just as much a simulation as a JPEG  
is a finder chart: the only difference is that there is a  
standardizable format description for the latter but not - yet - for  
the former.

To assist Rob, we need to bring things to fruition and make a final  
decision on <Reference>:

	- link attribute

		The only nominee is:
			uri			anyURI																		(current proposal)

	- content and name of the "format" attribute

		The nominees are:
			type			anyURI or anything else (e.g. UCD, MIME, ...)(current docs  
say "should")			(current proposal)
			type			only anyURI (docs say "must") but otherwise unspecified
			mimetype	a mimetype (text but whatever that means and in the hopes  
you have one)
			format		a SKOS vocabulary term representing a file format (which  
should include the possibility of a VOSpace designation for formats  
forseen by the IVOA)

	- content and name of the "meaning" attribute

		The nominees are:
			name		"A short, optional name to be used in descriptive  
text." (from present doc)			(current proposal)
			content		a SKOS vocabulary term
			meaning	a SKOS vocabulary term

	- tag content

		The nominees are:
			forbidden	nobody is going to read it anyway												(current  
proposal)
			allowed		but nobody is going to read it anyway, so the docs say  
"why bother?"

I vote for:
		uri,format,meaning,allowed

And the winner is.....
	
Rick