[fitsbits] Proposed Changes to the FITS Standard

[William Pence]

The new draft of the FITS Standard (available from 
http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/) does not propose any changes at all to the 
definition or use of random groups.   One of the proposed changes, 
however,  is to require that the PCOUNT and GCOUNT keywords must 
immediately follow the last NAXISn keyword in all conforming extensions, 
but this does not apply to random groups.  The Standard tries to make a 
clear distinction between the random groups structure and conforming 
extensions, so hopefully there should be no confusion between the 2.

Bill Pence

Peter Teuben wrote:
> On [Thu Aug 16 08:18], Eric Greisen wrote:
>> Random groups is by no means a dead format.  Following the lead of the
>> FITS community I added to AIPS the ability to write interferometer
>> visibility data using binary table format instead.  I believe that
>> none of the other major interferometry packages (casa, difmap, miriad,
>> etc) can read data written this way.  They all read data written in
>> the random groups format and future plans seem to be more of the
>> same.
> 
> gosh, Miriad sure seems so old now, but we totally rely on the random
> groups format for input/output to other packages. So, random groups may
> be old, but it works and isn't broken.
> 
> - peter
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence                       pence at milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov
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