[fitsmime] FITS Mime-Types for Mosaics

[William Joye]

Valid point. I think it is far more urgent to produce the RFC than to think 
about new mime-types. I only put this out to the community to start the 
discussion process. But lets not hold up the RFC on account of this.

One other idea. Is there a way we can use the HTTP Meta data field to indicate 
an interpretation of the FITS data (i.e. it is a events bin table, or it is a 
mosaic image...?) this would get around the problems of formally defining new 
mime-types...

I like the two proposed mime-types, simple, straight to the point, no ambiguity.

<snip>

>After rewriting 29 drafts of the RFC I have come to the opinion
>that, within the scope of FITS convention and agreement, there
>are only two kinds of FITS files, and therefore can only be
>two MIME types:
>
>application/fits
>    This would be the default MIME type for FITS files which are not
>    classified by their creator.
>
>image/fits
>    This would be the MIME type for FITS files whose creator is
>    willing to assert that they are principally intended to
>    communicate the content of the image in the PHDU.
>
>Any other MIME types would require more conventions and agreements
>within the FITS community.  I believe that more such conventions and
>agreements would be a good thing.  I also believe that they will not
>happen anytime soon, and that the need for these two basic MIME types
>for FITS is great enough to proceed now.
>
>I am not convinced that the scope of this discussion should stray into
>the field of getting more conventions and agreements from the FITS
>community, but that depends on the urgency of the timescale to
>produce the (first) RFC.
>
>--
>Steve Allen          UCO/Lick Observatory       Santa Cruz, CA 95064
>sla at ucolick.org      Voice: +1 831 459 3046     http://www.ucolick.org/~sla
>PGP: 1024/E46978C5   F6 78 D1 10 62 94 8F 2E    49 89 0E FE 26 B4 14 93
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Bill Joye
wjoye at cfa.harvard.edu
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics