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Date: Tue, 8 Dec 92 16:20:36 EST

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Date: Tue, 8 Dec 92 14:20:24 MST
From: [email-masked] (Doug Tody)
To: [email-masked]
Subject: binary tables discussion
Sender: [email-masked]

Bill, I agree that the issue of strings in binary tables is an important
one.  Although this has been discussed off and on all year, so far we
haven't done anything about it.  Probably there has been enough discussion
and some sort of draft appendix to the BT document is called for.

However, I think you are being extremely optimistic in thinking that this
could be in hand in one or two weeks.  I think this would take at least 1-2
man-days (1-2 calendar weeks) for, say, 2 or 3 of us working together to
carefully generate a draft, then perhaps 2 weeks for the WFC and IAU WG to
discuss it internally.  We might then want to put the proposed appendix out
on sci.astro.fits for public review for a time.  I am willing to help with
this, in fact I think I need to be involved, but my time is fully committed
until after the AAS meeting January 3-7.  Hence we cannot start this process
until at least January and realistically it will take several months to
complete. 

It remains possible that when we review the technical issues again carefully
there will still be disagreement over whether this should be included in the
current proposal.  Hence there is no guarantee that an agreement would be
reached, although I am confident that we could at least agree on a layered
convention.           - Doug