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

[William Thompson]

On 06/24/15 12:28, Mandel, Eric wrote:
>     How interesting.  I'm not sure if your experience argues for or
>     against the incorporation of tile compression in the standard.
>
>
> For me as a developer, tiled compression already is part of the standard: the
> very first email we got after announcing release 1 of JS9 (October 2014) was a
> complaint that it did not  handle rice-compressed tiled images.  I eventually
> came to the conclusion that cfitsio _was_ the practical standard, at least for
> anyone trying to write software for the community at large. I know Bill Joye has
> spent a lot of time implementing tiled compression in DS9 (which does not use
> cfitsio), just because of widespread demand.
>
> So in the end I guess I would have to recommend official adoption of widely-used
> conventions such as tiled compression, because at least they will get documented
> properly. It may be that we have to recognize the reality of this path:
> conventions become de facto standards by wide adoption, and eventually need to
> be recognized as such.

I agree.  When conventions become widely used in a consistent manner, and become 
ingrained to the point where they are critical to major missions, observatories, 
and the like, then it's time that these conventions became part of the standard 
to ensure continued consistency.

-- 
William Thompson
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 671
Greenbelt, MD  20771
USA

301-286-2040
William.T.Thompson at nasa.gov