[fitsbits] UTF-8 in BINTABLE String Columns {External}

[Mark Taylor]

On Mon, 6 Apr 2026, William Pence wrote:

> So this proposal is to allow UTF-8 characters in ‘A’ TFORM columns in ASCII
> and Binary tables.  FITS headers would still be restricted to ASCII
> characters only. Correct?

Correct.
 
> In that case, does the count character ‘r’ in the TFORMn = ‘rA’ keyword
> represent the total length of the field in bytes, and not necessarily the
> number of characters in the field?

Yes, it would have to be the length of the field in bytes,
so that NAXIS1 still makes sense.  As argued at utf8everywhere.org,
character count is a slippery concept in the Unicode world
which it's probably best to avoid in contexts like this.

--
Mark Taylor  Astronomical Programmer  Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bristol.ac.uk          https://www.star.bristol.ac.uk/mbt/