[fitsmime] FITS Mime-Types

[William Joye]

Well, since I'm the one who started the recent fuss, I'll begin with what I 
need, and what I've found out so far...

As author of ds9, I need to know the type of file a web site is trying to 
download into ds9, and if its compressed or not, and how.

I've reviewed Steve's RFC and agree with it 100%. The problem now is to get it 
submitted and to get the various archive sites to conform.

Currently, the various archive sites are using a host of mime-types and 
content-encoding strings. This is what I've encountered so far:

mime-type			what			where
---------			----			-----
image/fits			fits			RFC
image/fits-hcompress		hcompress'd		RFC
application/fits-image		image			RFC
application/fits-table		bin table		RFC
application/fits-group					RFC

image/x-fits			uncompressed image	strasbg/uk
binary/x-fits			uncompressed bin table	strasbg/uk
application/x-fits		uncompressed image	ESO DSS server

image/x-gfits			gzip'd image		strasbg/uk
binary/x-gfits			gzip'd bintable		strasbg/uk
image/gz-fits			gzip'd image		?
display/gz-fits			gzip'd image		ESO DSS server

image/x-cfits			compress'd image	strasbg/uk
binary/x-cfits			compress'd bin table	strasbg/uk

image/x-hfits			hcompress'd image	strasbg/uk
binary/x-hfits			hcompress'd bin table	strasbg/uk
image/x-fits-h			hcompress'd image	MAST

and

content-encoding		where
----------------		-----
gzip				RFC
compress			RFC
pack				RFC
x-gzip				MAST/NED

currently in ds9 2.2.1, I support all the above mime-types, but no 
content-encoding. Starting with version 2.3b1, ds9 will fully support both the 
RFC mime-types/content-encoding, and backward compatibility with older 
'nonstandard' mime-types, as long as they are still in use.

Bill Joye
wjoye at cfa.harvard.edu
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics