VOTable 1.2

[Mark Taylor]

Francois,

I'm looking at applying to STIL the small number of changes between 
the VOTable 1.1 REC and the 1.2 WD.  Last year I asked some questions 
about the changes at 1.2 to the INFO element:

On Thu, 9 Oct 2008, Mark Taylor wrote:

>    INFO element:
>       What is the thinking behind the changes to INFO?  It appears to be
>       converging with PARAM sufficiently that there doesn't seem to be
>       much point in having two different elements.
>       Also: does it make sense to have a 'unit' attribute for an element
>       whose values can only be of string type?

although Doug replied at the time about why a PARAM and an INFO are 
not doing the same job, and I understand the point about post-operational 
diagnostics, I still don't know the answers to the other questions:

   1. Why change INFO syntax at all?  There may be good reasons, 
      but I don't recall this proposal, or the motivation for it, 
      being discussed on the VOTable list.

   2. If INFO is only for strings, why does it have a 'unit' attribute?

and another one I've just thought of

   3. If INFO is only for strings, why can it contain a VALUES element?

thanks

Mark

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/