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

[jaffe]

Given the almost univeral acceptance of UTF-8 coding, I would favor its 
use in the A format in tables.  Since it is variable length, the length 
parameter for any given column would have to be the maximum for that 
column, and the strings in each row padded out to this maximum.
Walter

On 2026-04-11 19:47, Lucio Chiappetti via fitsbits wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Apr 2026, Mark Taylor via fitsbits wrote:
>> However UTF-8 is inherently a variable-length encoding, so each
>> character (strictly, each Unicode code point) may be encoded
>> as 1, 2, 3 or 4 bytes.
> 
> That's while I advocate a specialized type which gives both the number 
> of bytes and the number of code points (jVk)
> 
> 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?
> 
> That I would say is a must of "once FITS forever FITS"
> 
> On Mon, 6 Apr 2026, Seaman, Robert Lewis - (rseaman) via fitsbits 
> wrote:
> 
>> overall length calculations. But it seems a waste of time to try to
>> squeeze UTF-8 (in all its glory) into ASCII FITS header records. This 
>> is
>> another good reason to de-emphasize or deprecate ASCII FITS headers 
>> for
>> header-style metadata in a bintable.
> 
> Yes, Unicode is essentially jsuyt for metadata not science data, and a 
> specific metadata bintable would be desirable.
> 
> I thought something about that some 12 years ago, I cannot remember 
> whether at time I circulated it to some restricted list. I recently 
> sent it privately to some of you, but I think now it fould be as well 
> disclosed generally
> 
> http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/FITS/NewTG/metaext.html
> http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/FITS/NewTG/metaext.html#uni
> 
> Lucio Chiappetti
> 
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