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<p class="MsoNormal">Howdy,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It is always good to see a spirited FITS discussion! A few more peppy points:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">There is always an assertion that it would be preferable to use a “modern” format<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Yet projects often end up using FITS<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">This choice does not result from peer pressure<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">There is nothing magic about IEEE floating point or twos-complement integers<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Efficient (compressed) data representations may not even be binary (Rice is unary)<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Are dynamically typed languages dynamic enough?<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">A tile-compressed image is a simple binary table<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">My first encounter with FITS data (c. 1983) was writing a FITS image reader from scratch by consulting the original journal article(s) (possibly also my first encounter with C)<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">I am confident young Rob could have written a reader for tile-compressed binary data with little more effort (or code) just from reading the current FITS standard<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">FITS documentation is pretty good<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">(Comments about other projects’ documentation omitted)<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Most FITS discussions/disagreements are about metadata<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Only a small minority of FITS metadata is strictly required to enforce the structure of each extension<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Science metadata (astronomical and computer science) would be legal (and trivial) to represent, using any schema you like, in a binary table structure, described in a convention or
appendix or chapter of the standard<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Schemata could also include language-specific pragma, for data-typing purposes or otherwise<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">It is perhaps peer pressure that pushes projects to use 80-char ASCII header keywords in 2880-byte records<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Consider, rather, what is the optimal tiled representation for your project, and separately<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">How can your project’s (and community) metadata best be represented in a schema realized as a binary table?<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rob<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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