[fitsbits] Release of a new version of the FITS Standard document

[William Pence]

The IAU FITS Working Group has issued a draft of a new version of the 
FITS Standard document that includes descriptions of the new features 
that have been officially added to the FITS format since the publication 
of the previous version of the document.   The 8 main new features are:

 1. Conventions for representing Time world coordinates
 2. The CONTINUE keyword for representing long string keyword values
    over multiple header records
 3. A convention for preallocating scratch space in a FITS header which
    is then available for future use when appending new keywords to the
    header
 4. The INHERIT keyword to indicate whether or not the current extension
    should inherit the keywords in the primary header
 5. The CHECKSUM and DATASUM keywords for verifying the veracity of the
    contents of the file
 6. The TLMINn and TLMAXn keywords for specifying the minimum and
    maximum values in table columns
 7. The Green Bank convention for expanding header keywords into table
    column entries when the value varies row-by-row
 8. Conventions for compressing FITS images and tables

A draft version of this document is available at 
http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_standard.html.  An index to all the new 
features can be found in appendix H.3.

A full release of this document is expected later in 2016, pending 
possible minor editorial corrections to the text.  Please report any 
typographical errors or suggestions for improving the clarity of the 
text to the Lucio Chiappetti (lucio "at" lambrate.inaf.it).

Bill Pence
on behalf of the IAU FITS Working Group



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