[fitsbits] FITS conventions update

[William Pence]

This is to announce that a new  FITS 'Header Space' convention has been 
submitted to the Registry of FITS Conventions, located at 
http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_registry.html.  This is a simple 
convention for preallocating space in a FITS header to hold the 
anticipated number of keywords that may be written during later 
processing of the file.  Preallocating the space  circumvents the 
inefficiencies associated with having to insert space for more header 
keywords in an existing FITS file.  This convention has been supported 
by the CFITSIO library since about 1996.

The convention will remain in an "Under Review" status for at least a 
couple months;  if no objections are raised, it will then be added to 
the registry.

Also, please note that the PSRFITS convention for storing pulsar data 
has now been under review for many months.   If there are no objections, 
I will add it to the registry in January.

-Bill
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence    Astrophysicist William.Pence at nasa.gov
NASA/GSFC Code 662     [Emeritus]       +1-301-286-4599 (voice)
Greenbelt MD 20771                      +1-301-286-1684 (fax)