Peter Teuben wrote:
>
> The ADASS just finished , during which I presented a NEMO poster,
> (URL: http://astro.umd.edu/nemo/papers/adass94/talk.html)
> with a rehashed NBODY BINTABLE proposal. This proposal is one of the
> many ways (but we ought to choose one!) Nbody / SPH data should be
> exchanged between different group, since we're all using different
> packages. The observers (which most of the attendents were) are
> quite excited (and surprised) we are actually considering doing
> this, and have encouraged me to try and get an agreement on this.
>
> Somebody at the ADASS mentioned there was some talk about this
> issue ('we ought to choose something sensible') at the Aspen (?)
> summer school, and perhaps there was some talk at the summer AAS
> since it looks like the program supported it. I wasn't there, so
> I don't know, neither have I heard my spies mention it.
>
> So, do you know anything about it, what are the opinions in the
> group. I'd love to get some more action in this arena.
>
The local guys seem somewhat intractable about this. That is,
they want TIPSY binary to be the standard. That attitude may mean that
they will have no say in the outcome!
Frankly, I haven't seen the discussion that should precede acronyms.
What are the specifications? Mine would start with:
1) Compact: It needs to be a format that is flexible enough to store only the
needed info. (e.g. stars need not have "gas info")
2) Commitment to filters: for TIPSY/IRAF/AIPS
3) movable, yet archivable: e.g. likely an xdr sort of binary
What are the others guys?