On Sep 18, 2006, at 10:56 AM, Alberto Conti wrote:
> I believe the issue IS formats. The IVOA should recommend a
> standard for the VO grounded in what users need/want thereby
> "guiding" users toward a better experience and an easier
> integration of VO tools.
Ok. "Angles shall be referenced in degrees. Time-like angles, e.g., right ascension or hour angle, shall otherwise be in units of hours. One hour equals 15 degrees at the equator. Variables to store angles should be double precision for most purposes. Units of angular (or temporal) quantities may be encountered in degrees, minutes or seconds of arc, in hours, minutes, or seconds of time, or in radians. Representations of quantities in units of radians or seconds of either time or arc shall be decimal. Representations of quantities in units of degrees or hours or of minutes of either time or arc may be in decimal or sexigesimal. The only variations of sexagesimal notation that IVOA facilities are guaranteed to recognize use a colon separator with no embedded whitespace allowed. Either one or two colons are permitted with each successive colon representing a factor of 1/60 or 1/3600, respectively. The sign of the most significant base-60 field will be taken to apply to the entire sexigesimal quantity. No other field may be signed. Only the least significant field may contain a decimal representation - all other fields must be integers. The most significant field is unbounded, in both positive and negative directions. External bounds may be explicitly applied. Fields other than the most significant are bounded between 0 (zero) and 60, open above."
Got interrupted at the end and lost my train of thought, but you get the idea. When there is a text box requiring entry, give one of those little grayed out examples along the lines of "hh:mm:ss.ss", or what have you.
Rob Received on 2006-09-18Z20:57:04