[fitsmime] FITS MIME Considerations

[William Thompson]

Lucio Chiappetti wrote:

	...
 
> Note that I'd used "myfile.mytype" above, and not "myfile.fits", because I
> consider an useless and annoying limitation the fact to use extension
> ".fits" (I'd prefer to use ".image", ".spectrum", ".mission_type" or
> whatever which makes reference to the INTENDED USAGE).

	...

While I'm in general agreement with Lucio's excellently written message, I feel
I must take exception to the above.  The extension of the file should always
tell you what the format of the file is, i.e. whether it is FITS, CDF, netCDF,
HDF, etc., or even one of the image formats, GIF, JPEG, etc.  I feel very
strongly about that.

Not only is this common computer practice, but can be extremely useful.  For
example, one of the resources we use in the SOHO project are the orbit and
attitude files, which are available in several formats, CDF, FITS, and plain
ASCII text.  These files all have the same names, with the appropriate extension
for the file format.  There are also locations where the same image may be
available in FITS and GIF format.  A similar situation exists with documents,
which are also often served in multiple formats, e.g. Word, PDF, PostScript,
etc.

This is slightly off topic, except in that one would presume that the MIME
definition would include references to the typical extensions ".fits", ".fit",
and ".fts".

William Thompson