[fitsbits] 64-bit integers

[Mark Calabretta]

On Mon 2005/05/02 16:14:57 -0400, William Pence wrote
in a message to: fitsbits at nrao.edu

>Given the past controversies about adding 64-bit integer support to FITS, it 
>is somewhat remarkable that there has been so little discussion of this now. 

I support the proposal, though with one reservation: how will cfitsio
(or your favourite FITS reader) load a BITPIX=64 image onto a 32-bit
computer?  Are we assuming the availability of "long long int" in C
(as is gcc), INTEGER*8 (or whatever it is) in FORTRAN, and similarly
in other languages?  Will coercing these values to double precision be
considered acceptable if 64-bit integers are not available?

Mark Calabretta
ATNF