[fitsbits] Re: [fitsmime] New MIME-types-for-FITS RFC draft

[Arnold Rots]

Just a few fairly minor questions which probably reveal my great ignorance.

Concerning the issue of restricting image/fits to two non-degenerate
coordinate axes, are there any mimetypes in existence that deal with
multi-dimensional images?  We're not the only ones who work with three
and more dimensional images.  I would have imagined that there would
at least be one for 3-D.

There has been some back and forth on gzipping and identification of
tables.  I just wondered whether that would be an area where the
optional parameters might come in handy.
I must admit that I am not so sure about gzipping - that should be
indicated by its own mimetype, really.
But it might be useful if application/fits could provide some clue as
to the way the file is to be used/interpreted.
In particular, we mainly produce FITS files with an empty primary
where the first extension is the "principal" extension.  It might be
helpful to say: this FITS file consists of binary tables and you
really should first look in extension X - that's the principal, the
others are auxiliary.
HEASARC/OGIP adopted the concept of HDUNAMEi, a number of years ago,
in an attempt to categorize the tables that are in use.  I don't know
whether one would go in that direction - to give the client some idea
of what's coming and to decide whether it can handle it.

  - Arnold

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Arnold H. Rots                                Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory                tel:  +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67                              fax:  +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138                             arots at head.cfa.harvard.edu
USA                                     http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
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