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

[Seaman, Robert Lewis - (rseaman)]

Hi all,

There also was (note the past tense), NOAO's Foreign File Encapsulation Convention:

https://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/registry/foreign.html

I don’t remember the precise context, but in general, this was to support archival use cases. There must have been an ADASS poster. I think we might have used this to save weather pictures to the Save The Bits tapes?!? In which case, there are some confused NOIRLab folks.

God knows I’m fond of FITS, but honestly, it is not the answer to every data engineering question. As somebody said, focus on the DOIs, maybe investigate PDF/A, for that matter, how are you generating the “rather complicated graphics files”? Maybe you should be archiving or transporting the software needed to generate the graphics on-the-fly.

Rob Seaman
Catalina Sky Survey

—

On 3/15/26, 1:40 PM, "fitsbits" wrote:

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<http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html>
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>

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