[fitsbits] further reopening of Public Comment Period on the CONTINUE convention

[William Pence]

On 4/19/2016 2:07 AM, THIERRY FORVEILLE wrote:
> Could we get a summary of the arguments for merging the CONTINUE convention
> into the standard? Up to now I have only seen (valid) reasons not to do
> so, and unless I hear good counterarguments I would probably vote No.

Here are the 2 most compelling arguments that I can think of for 
incorporating the continue convention into the FITS standard:

1.  The CONTINUE convention has been used in a large number of FITS 
files (perhaps millions?) created by multiple important missions 
(including RXTE and Chandra) over the past 20+ years.  In order to 
preserve the scientific integrity of these data archives, it is 
essential that the documentation on how to decode and interpret the 
CONTINUE keywords be preserved for future generations of scientific 
users.  I don't think there can be any argument that the most obvious 
and most secure place to preserve this information for posterity is to 
document it directly in the FITS standard document.

2.  Despite the fact that FITS is a relatively old and simple data 
format, it will continue to be actively used by existing and new 
projects for decades to come.  The IAUFWG has the responsibility of 
maintaining FITS so that it continues to meet the needs of its users. 
One of the most often cited shortcoming of FITS is that there no 
prescribed way to record a long character string (> 68 characters long) 
in a FITS header.  We now have the opportunity to remedy this situation 
by adding the CONTINUE convention to the FITS standard as the 
recommended way to record long character strings in FITS headers in a 
standard and portable way.  The fact that the CONTINUE convention is in 
the FITS standard will help ensure that most major astronomical software 
systems will support the convention.  This should also help to reduce 
the proliferation of other project-specific conventions for encoding 
long characters strings in FITS headers.

-Bill
____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence    Astrophysicist     William.Pence at nasa.gov
NASA/GSFC Code 662     [Emeritus]       +1-301-286-4599 (voice)
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