[NeXus-committee] Reminder of action items

[Peterson, Peter F.]

Thank you all again for attending the NIAC meeting in October, we made a
lot of progress and I am encouraged. That being said there has not been
any postings to this mailing list since then and the last change to the
swiki was November 18th when a page on NMI3 funding was added at
<http://www.neutron.anl.gov.:8080/NeXus/99>. This message (however long)
is to get people working by reminding you of the commitments that
various people made during the last committee meeting. If you have done
what was requested of you then let me know and I'll mark it on the list
for when I remind everybody again.

- Przemek Klosowski will continue to compile questions and answers for
the frequently asked questions (FAQ) document on the web site.
- Mark Koennecke will add support for the NX_BOOLEAN and NX_BINARY
datatypes to the NeXus API.
- Nick Hauser will look into holding the next annual NIAC meeting at or
near ANSTO around the time of International Conference on Neutron
Scattering, being held in Sydney at the end of November, 2005.
- All committee members will look into alternative locations and dates
- If the number of facilities requesting voting members on the NIAC
exceeds twenty, plans to reorganize the committee will be considered.
One proposal is to split the committee into two groups, a larger group
for discussion and a smaller group (elected from the larger one) that is
eligible to vote on policy decisions.
- Anyone adding a page to the NeXus Swiki should ensure that it contains
a list of "interested parties" supervising discussions on that page.
- Stephen Cottrell will add the muon instrument definitions to the swiki
- Peter Peterson will determine a "universal linking scheme" for
locating information located outside of the NeXus file
- There will be an additional API function to open the parent of a group
or field (to open the parent of the "source" of a link).
- Mark Koennecke will add a new function to the NeXus API called
NXopengroup(path), which opens the group above the path specified.
- Thomas Proffen will consider improvements to the NXcharacterizations
base class before it is ratified
- Thomas Proffen will propose a new version of NXprocess to supercede
the existing ratified version.
- Peter Peterson will propose a new version of NXuser that is consistent
with the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.
- Ron Ghosh will create a clearer definition for the orientation (UB)
matrix that exists inside the NXsample class.
- Peter Peterson will propose a change to the chemical formula to allow
for isotopes.
- Ray Osborn will merge the NXdisk_chopper and NXfermi_chopper classes
into a unified NXchopper class.
- Andy Goetz will propose changes to the NXsource class to make it
applicable to x-ray synchrotron facilities.
- Andy Goetz will propose a NXinsertion_device class to add to the
NXinstrument class, to use in synchrotron data files.
- Nick Maliszewskyj will propose changes to NXcrystal to account for the
scattering sense of triple axis measurements.
- Peter Peterson will propose improved documentation for the NXguide
class.
- Ray Osborn will edit all of the base classes to insure that they have
both distance and NXgeometry groups defined.
- Nick Maliszewskyj will propose a NXpolarizer class
- Mark Koennecke will propose changes to NXbeam_stop to make it more
consistent with usage in small angle scattering instruments.
- Nick Maliszewskyj will propose a change to the NXmonitor class to make
it more consistent with instruments that scan for fixed statistics
rather than fixed time.
- Ron Ghosh will propose a change to NXbeam to make it consistent with
usage in McStas.
- Nick Maliszewskyj will consult with a NIST expert on plug-in
architectures to recommend its implementation in NXtranslate.
- Freddie Akeroyd will produce method signatures for a C version of the
NeXus Utility API that duplicates the functionality of the existing
Fortran 90 Utility API.
- Freddie Akeroyd will add nightly builds of the tarball installation
kit to the CVS server so users do not need autotools to build the latest
version
- Peter Peterson will propose a method for subclassing instrument
definitions.
- Ray Osborn will identify common attributes. The list of common
attributes will be compiled and stored separate from any individual base
class.
- Mark Koennecke will produce a document describing "translation
tables." A short description is that translation tables will work
similar to NXtranslate, except the plugin architecture will exist within
an extended NeXus API.

Peter Peterson
Executive Secretary, NIAC