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Hi all,</div>
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There also was (note the past tense), NOAO's Foreign File Encapsulation Convention:</div>
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<a href="https://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/registry/foreign.html" data-outlook-id="ed20b014-c498-41c9-af99-07df5dead539">https://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/registry/foreign.html</a></div>
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I don’t remember the precise context, but in general, this was to support archival use cases. There must have been an ADASS poster. I think we might have used this to save weather pictures to the Save The Bits tapes?!? In which case, there are some confused
NOIRLab folks.</div>
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God knows I’m fond of FITS, but honestly, it is not the answer to every data engineering question. As somebody said, focus on the DOIs, maybe investigate PDF/A, for that matter, how are you generating the “rather complicated graphics files”? Maybe you should
be archiving or transporting the software needed to generate the graphics on-the-fly.</div>
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Rob Seaman</div>
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Catalina Sky Survey</div>
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—</div>
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<div class="ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message skipProofing">On 3/15/26, 1:40 PM, "fitsbits" wrote:</div>
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On Sun, 15 Mar 2026, jaffe via fitsbits wrote:<br>
<br>
> For an interferometric application I am storing the binary data in the<br>
> so-called OI-FITS convention of FITS. But on the side I am generating<br>
> rather complicated graphics files for my users, in this case in PDF. I<br>
> would like to store the .pdf file as a table in the same FITS file. Is<br>
> there a conventional way of doing this? I could create a 1 row binary<br>
> table with the entire PDF file as the single column,<br>
<br>
If you really want to have the pdf stuff stored in the same FITS file, I<br>
cannot see any other way. This will of course be "non-standard".<br>
<br>
I guess your correspondents would need anyhow a (relatively trivial)<br>
script or other piece of software to extract the pdf dataset and then<br>
submit it to a pdf viewer.<br>
<br>
About 12 years ago, whn we were discussing metadata in FITS and other<br>
improvements I wrote a proposal incudling among others a so called "MIME<br>
extension" by which one could append any king of file as a FITS extension.<br>
I can't remember whether I circulated it privately to some restricgted<br>
subset of people or not (definitely it dod not make any formal<br>
advancement). Let me know if you are interested.<br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Corti 12 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)<br>
For more info : <a href="http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html" data-outlook-id="f6695a74-5a96-4bf3-92d8-dabc7615e647">
http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html</a><br>
------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
"Se si maneggiassero di più i libri che le armi, non si vedrebbero tante<br>
stragi, tanti misfatti e tante brutture" (Aldo Manuzio, ca. 1506)<br>
"If people would handle more books than weapons, we would not see so msny<br>
carnages, misdeeds, and awful things." (Aldus Manutius, ca. 1506)<br>
><br>
<br>
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