[fitsbits] versioning vs. schema -- where does it stop?

[Francois Ochsenbein]

>
>> There was also some suggestion about having a versioning mechanism in
>> FITS -- and it would be a great benefit, I think, to know right from the
>> beginning of a FITS input stream that it has (or may have), far beyond the
>> beginning of the file, some extensions which may NOT be recognized by an
>> old software. I feel this modification would be a good opportunity to
>> include this versioning mechanism in FITS.
>
>Doesn't a versioning mechanism effectively require creating and
>approving a list of UCDs for various FITS concepts?
>
>I am left wondering whether it is politically possible in the current
>environment to create a versioning mechanism for FITS which does not
>extend most of the way toward requiring an XML schema definition.
>

===> I was in fact thinking on a really light-weight mechanism --
     for instance just a recommendation to include a version
     number of smething similar in comment part of the SIMPLE 
     keyword if the FITS file potentially makes use of the 64 bit.

>[...]


--Francois
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Francois Ochsenbein       ------       Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg
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