[fitsbits] tile compressed fits, blackbox

[van Nieuwenhoven, Richard]

Hi,

We are in the last stages of implementing/porting all tile compression
code from cfitsio to nom-tam-fits. The construction of unit tests that
reach every angle of the algorithm was a real challenge ;-) But sadly
they are still all white box tests. (Tests that where constructed with
the knowledge of the code to reach a specific situation in the code)

Now help is needed from the fits community, to do the blackbox testing.
We need real live COMPRESSED fits files that we can use for blackbox
testing. Specially for the corner cases, where some specialities of the
specification are used.

Some natural occurrences of:
- square tiles (so any non default row by row tiles)
- null values in any constellation
- containing a UNCOMPRESSED_DATA column
  (old handling for tiles that could not be compressed using the
  specified algorithm)
- containing a GZIP_COMPRESSED_DATA column
  (new handling for tiles that could not be compressed using the
  specified algorithm)
- any files that use fine tuned parameters to reach a special goal.

We would be very thankful for any COMPRESSED fits files that are send to
us (or a link where the file can be downloaded). Please specify if the
file may be published freely or if there are licence issues connected to
the file. If requested the files will we deleted after the integration
tests.

great thanks for any help!

     Ritchie

P.S.
The fits compression code is now available pure java (already a few
refactoring cycles where done to make the code more "java" like), so if
somebody needs the compression algorithms feel free to copy/convert them
from nom-tam-fits.