OBJECT names

[William Pence]

Don Wells wrote on 17 April:

> I recommend that some additional text be appended to the single
> sentence associated with the 'OBJECT Keyword' entry on page 23 in
> Section 5.4.2.2 (Keywords Describing Observations).
> 
> This text should recommend that new software implementations which
> read and write FITS files should support OBJECT strings with lengths
> of at least 26 characters, and preferably 32 (maybe 36?) characters.

Would there be any objections to recommending that software support
strings up to the maximum 68 character length?  Why introduce an
arbitrary shorter limit?  In fact, instead of just adding a
recommendation for only the OBJECT keyword, a more general way to
handle this would be to add a couple sentences to the end of section
5.2.1 (which defines character string keywords) which says something to
the effect:

"The maximum allowed length of a keyword string is 68 characters (with
the opening and closing quote characters in columns 11 and 80,
respectively).  Software which reads or writes any character string
keyword should support strings up to this maximum length."

-Bill Pence