Comments on NOST FITS Standard 1.2

[Tim Pearson]

On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Bill Cotton wrote:

>    I would like to raise a strenuous objection to the "deprecation" of
> the random groups format in the current draft NOST FITS definition
> document.  I'm not sure exactly what the term "deprecated" means but
> I interpret it as implying that it will be disallowed at some point
> in the future.
>    Random groups FITS format is used heavily by the radio
> interferometry community to contain interferometer data.  A few years
> ago it was thought that binary tables would replace random groups as
> the primary format for interferometer data but this has not happened
> and is unlikely to happen for the foreseeable future.  A format
> actively used by a nontrivial fraction of the astronomical community
> should not be deprecated. 
> 
> -Bill Cotton

I agree with this. There are a lot of radio and optical interferometer
data stored in this format, and programs to read the format will be
required indefinitely; and while the major analysis packages (aips,
aips++) expect data in this format, programs will be written to create
data in the random groups format. So the format should not be
deprecated. It (together with a set of rules, implicit in aips, about
how the data should be organized within the random-groups file) is the
de facto interchange format for interferometry data.

- Tim Pearson