[fitsbits] Storing PDF and other graphics binary files in FITS {External} {External}

[Lucio Chiappetti]

On Sun, 15 Mar 2026, jaffe via fitsbits wrote:

> For an interferometric application I am storing the binary data in the 
> so-called OI-FITS convention of FITS.  But on the side I am generating 
> rather complicated graphics files for my users, in this case in PDF.  I 
> would like to store the .pdf file as a table in the same FITS file.  Is 
> there a conventional way of doing this?  I could create a 1 row binary 
> table with the entire PDF file as the single column,

If  you really want to have the pdf stuff stored in the same FITS file, I 
cannot see any other way. This will of course be "non-standard".

I guess your correspondents would need anyhow a (relatively trivial) 
script or other piece of software to extract the pdf dataset and then 
submit it to a pdf viewer.

About 12 years ago, whn we were discussing metadata in FITS and other 
improvements I wrote a proposal incudling among others a so called "MIME 
extension" by which one could append any king of file as a FITS extension. 
I can't remember whether I circulated it privately to some restricgted 
subset of people or not (definitely it dod not make any formal 
advancement). Let me know if you are interested.


-- 
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Corti 12 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)
For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
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