[fitsbits] Start of the 'INHERIT' Public Comment Period

[Steve Allen]

On Fri 2007-04-06T08:03:37 -0700, Rob Seaman hath writ:
> William Pence wrote:
>
> >Maybe I'm missing your point, but I don't see how that paper can be
> >interpreted as an endorsement of the inherit convention.
>
> It can't.  The fact that the paper attempted to force a particular
> outcome

There are factors other than the approved FITS papers which have
forced particular outcomes.  This was also in the context of PHDUs
which with empty data arrays.

The data reduction package developed at Lick would not accept
FITS files unless the PHDU contained these keywords:

NAXIS   = 2
NAXIS1  = 0
NAXIS2  = 0

So that's what we put in the empty PHDU of our mosaic files.  But as
we got close to the point of deploying the instrument producing these
files we found that we could not continue that practice, for the data
reduction package developed at NOAO would not accept such FITS files.
What it wanted was

NAXIS   = 0

I note with gratitude that Pence's FITSIO toolkit allowed either
scenario without forcing the issue.

The larger internet world of interoperable standards is attacking
another such issue right now with calendaring programs.
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/calsify-charter.html
One might think that scheduling appointments using civil time and
the Gregorian calendar had a well tested, obvious solution, but no.
In that arena the initial standard in RFC 2445 was not firm enough.
Existing implementations ignore the letter of the standard and are
not fully interoperable.  They are struggling with a new version in
hopes of removing ambiguity while maintaining compatibility, but this
has been opined:
    I believe we should make it clear to implementors that they ignore
    VERSION at their peril.
To some extent FITS, at least the voice of the community if not the
letter of the standard, probably has to do the same.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
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