FITS compression

[Lucio Chiappetti]

On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, William Pence wrote:

> It is a little confusing, but this proposal only applies to compressing
> images that would otherwise be stored in a FITS primary array or IMAGE

that was clear enough (at least to me) ...

> extension.  The compressed image bytes are then stored in a binary table,

...being the binary table format already overloaded with different (semantic)
applications, and being the "variable format" the most awkward feature in it,
would it not be neater to define "compressed images" as an altogether *NEW*
FITS extension ? 

Its data area could then be arranged as a stream of compressed data according
to any of the proposed formats, and just header keywords used to describe it.

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