[fitsbits] start of Public Comment Period on the INHERIT convention

[Landsman, Wayne B. (GSFC-667.0)[ADNET SYSTEMS INC]]

On 6/23/15 2:56 PM, William Pence wrote:
> So far, all the comments about the INHERIT convention have been quite 
> negative.  Does anyone want to offer any positive comments in support 
> of incorporating this convention into the FITS standard?
I will offer the positive comment of human readability.     If I have 
100 image extensions, and they all share identical values of 200 FITS 
keywords, then I would prefer that these "fixed" keywords be stored in 
the primary header, so that they do not clutter the image extension 
headers.

In addition, eliminating the INHERIT convention would eliminate any 
distinction between keywords with "fixed" image values, and those whose 
values can change with each extension.     This meta information in the 
INHERIT convention provides additional data integrity -- any updates of 
the fixed keywords are forced to apply to every image extension.

I am not certain if the advantages of INHERIT convention are sufficient 
to include it in the FITS standard.      But I hope that groups ( such 
as STScI  ) that currently use the convention will continue to use it 
.      --Wayne