[fitsbits] updates to the FITS standard document

[William Pence]

On 6/22/2015 5:28 AM, THIERRY FORVEILLE wrote:
> In that respect, having all 6 conventions under review at the same time
> is not helpful. (...) I may not be able to look at all of them before
> the deadlines and could then only abstain on those that I would not have
> looked at. Defining priorities would help, as that would ensure that
> our available time is concentrated on the same proposals, and avoid
> that possibly all 6 get a few abstentions from people who have not been
> able to look at them.

OK, since you asked, here is my suggested priority order for reviewing 
the conventions (others may have different priorities, of course).

1.  Column limits
2.  Green Bank convention
3.  Blank header space
4.  Checksum keywords (review to be announced on 23 June)
5.  Image and table compression
6.  Continue long string keywords
7.  Inherit convention

Notes:

The first 3 conventions are very short and simple and should be fairly 
easy to review.

The 4th convention (checksum keywords) is also fairly short.  Note that 
the description of the recommended checksum algorithm in Appendix J will 
not be included in the official vote by the IAU FWG, so it is not 
strictly necessary to understand it in detail (although the algorithm 
does contain some clever mathematical tricks that may be of interest to 
some).

The 5th convention, on compression, is by far the longest and most 
complex of all the conventions.  While it is probably not necessary to 
understand every technical detail, it would be good to at least get a 
general understanding of the file compression process.

Finally, the 6th and 7th conventions are not difficult to understand, 
but may generate the most discussion.

-Bill