Subject: Re: wcs.ps

From: Lucio Chiappetti <lucio at ifctr.mi.cnr.it>
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 17:58:59 +0200 (MET DST)

On Wed, 31 Mar 1999, Francois Ochsenbein wrote:

> Appendix B with the OGIP conventions on units in FITS that,
> as far as I know, were never approved (was WCS approved ?)

a statement on the official approval status of both would be appreciated.

> There are the following points of disagreements:

I would say I agree with some points

> 3. The usage of the blank is not a good idea either, [..]
> 4. Some usual abbreviations like "ct" for count, or "ph"  [...]

I'm indifferent to other

> 1. Compared to the IAU Style Manual:
> 5. Finally, the usage of the trigonometric functions applied to

(as I would not care much for standardization of what are essentially labels,
I would expect human readability to be more important than computer
readability, and few programs needing to INTERPRET (parse) such data, but just
use them "as they are" to label plots or table captions).

But I **definitely disagree** on this one :

> 2. The usage of the ** for exponentiation is not really a good
>    idea -- it only makes sense for fortran programmers.
>    Why not a single-letter symbol like the carret (^) most
>    likely familiar to many more persons ? 

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