[fitsbits] Output array type when BZERO is an integer {External}

[Seaman, Robert Lewis - (rseaman)]

Howdy,

It is always good to see a spirited FITS discussion! A few more peppy points:


  *   There is always an assertion that it would be preferable to use a “modern” format

     *   Yet projects often end up using FITS
     *   This choice does not result from peer pressure


  *   There is nothing magic about IEEE floating point or twos-complement integers

     *   Efficient (compressed) data representations may not even be binary (Rice is unary)
     *   Are dynamically typed languages dynamic enough?


  *   A tile-compressed image is a simple binary table

     *   My first encounter with FITS data (c. 1983) was writing a FITS image reader from scratch by consulting the original journal article(s) (possibly also my first encounter with C)
     *   I am confident young Rob could have written a reader for tile-compressed binary data with little more effort (or code) just from reading the current FITS standard


  *   FITS documentation is pretty good

     *   (Comments about other projects’ documentation omitted)


  *   Most FITS discussions/disagreements are about metadata

     *   Only a small minority of FITS metadata is strictly required to enforce the structure of each extension
     *   Science metadata (astronomical and computer science) would be legal (and trivial) to represent, using any schema you like, in a binary table structure, described in a convention or appendix or chapter of the standard
     *   Schemata could also include language-specific pragma, for data-typing purposes or otherwise


  *   It is perhaps peer pressure that pushes projects to use 80-char ASCII header keywords in 2880-byte records

     *   Consider, rather, what is the optimal tiled representation for your project, and separately
     *   How can your project’s (and community) metadata best be represented in a schema realized as a binary table?

Rob

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