ASCII table tricks

[Steve Allen]

In article <199609061514.LAA01796 at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov>,
William Pence  <pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote:
>Would the proponents for allowing ASCII control characters in
>ASCII tables also want to allow CR and LF characters at the
>end of each header keyword?  It seems like this would
>also be required if one wants to be able to use standard
>text editors on FITS files.

Certainly not.  I do not pretend that it is possible to make a FITS
file comprehensible to an arbitrary text editing application.  I do
find that the addition of carriage control information between the
fields makes the table trivial to view and process by many more
applications.

My editor has no problem with a FITS header as is.  With the addition
of separators between the fields the ASCII table records become
relatively easy to edit, too.  This is obviously not something that
should be tried by a naive user with a poor editor, but that is hardly
a reason to prohibit the possibility.
--
Steve Allen          UCO/Lick Observatory       Santa Cruz, CA 95064
sla at ucolick.org      Voice: +1 408 459 3046     FAX: +1 408 454 9863
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