[fitsbits] Start of the CONTINUE keyword Public Comment Period

[Rob Seaman]

> The CONTINUE convention, however, is different in providing a more  
> general capability that could be used, for instance, within any  
> other convention.

I don't think I emphasized this point enough.  A continuation  
convention, whether the one on the table or any other, changes the  
meaning of other conventions.  One could, for instance, recast a  
CHECKSUM keyword:

	CHECKSUM= 'nADTnADQnADQnADQ'    /  ASCII 1's complement checksum

as:

	CHECKSUM= 'nADTnADQ&       '    /  ASCII 1's complement checksum
	CONTINUE  'nADQnADQ'

This would apply to your favorite string valued keyword as well.  The  
example above would be a legal continuation but an illegal checksum  
value.  (More than illegal for this example since the byte ordering  
needs to be preserved for the zeroing feature of the checksum to work.)

Perhaps we need a broader discussion of the boundaries of usage for  
conventions.  I suspect the issue of long values for string keywords  
remains an issue for the trusty old standards process, not the avant  
garde registry.  Continuation is only one possible way to handle long  
strings.

Rob

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