[fitsbits] Start of the FITS MIME type Public Comment Period

[Tim Pearson]

On May 19, 2004, at 12:06 PM, William Pence wrote:

> This is to announce the official start of the 4-week formal Public 
> Comment
> Period on the proposal to register 2 new Internet MIME media types for 
> FITS
> data files: "image/fits" and "application/fits".

I believe that specifying two media types, application/fits and 
image/fits, is confusing and unnecessary. A single type, 
application/fits, should suffice.

The proposal does not provide clear, unambiguous instructions for 
determining whether a given FITS file should be described as 
application/fits or image/fits. The apparent intent of the proposal is 
that the choice of media type should be used to convey information 
about the file that cannot be determined merely by examining the 
contents of the file. I think this is a mistake that will lead to 
confusion and incompatibilities in implementation.

I understand that the authors of the proposal do not agree with me, but 
I think this issue still needs further clarification.

Tim Pearson

Timothy J. Pearson
Astronomy Dept 105-24, Caltech, Pasadena, California 91125, USA