[fitsbits] start of Public Comment Period on compressed FITS image and tables

[William Pence]

Several compressed images that can be used for test purposes are 
available from the convention Web page at 
http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/registry/tilecompression.html.  The fpack 
utility program 
(http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fpack/) also can be 
used to generate other test compressed images from any other FITS image 
using whatever compression parameters you desire.

-Bill

On 6/24/2015 1:06 PM, van Nieuwenhoven, Richard wrote:
> At nom-tam-fits we wan't to implement the compression's and have done so partly already. The
> biggest problem is that the standard does not provide test data, and in my opinion this is a  prerequisite for a standard like this.
> In fact a good standard delivers a reference implementation or a compliance test.
>
> I can see that a reference implementation is not possible in a community like this, but the delivery of
> test data would make the live of a developer 1000 fold easyer. Especially if it is available in levels, like separate data files for the different kinds of compression.
>
> Sure the compression makes fits more comple, but that's what access library's like ours are for. Especially when the fits files start to get as big as e few gigabytes...
>
>         Ritchie