[wfc] Re: Bintable proposals

[Arnold Rots]

Greetings!
At the FITS BoF at ADASS I thanked Peter Teuben for all his good work
as chairman of the WGAS FITS Committee and I would like to repeat that
in this message.  I am grateful to him for having shouldered the
burden for a number of years.  At that BoF I also listed the status of
vvarious proposals and in my first act as your new chairman, I would
like to clear up some old business.

Attached are two proposals that were submitted almost a year ago by
Pence, Tody, and Cotton.  Although there was some discussion of
extraneous issues, I don't think they are particularly controversial
and I would like to move on to a vote.  However, before I do so, I
would like to ask whether you have any reservations regarding the
elevation of appendices B.1 and B.2 to standards status.

Thank you,

  - Arnold

Forwarded message:
> 
> As part of an ongoing effort to get a number of commonly used FITS
> conventions officially incorporated into the FITS Standard document, we, the
> authors of the Astronomy and Astrophysics paper that defined the format of
> FITS binary tables, plan to submit the following 2 proposals to the WGAS
> FITS Committee (the North American regional FITS committee) for
> consideration.  As you may know, the appendices to the Bintable paper, which
> describe the variable-length array convention and the TDIMn keyword
> convention, were never officially approved by the various FITS committees
> and are included in the FITS Standard document "for informational purposes
> only".   Given that these 2 conventions have been widely used within the
> FITS community for many years, we believe it is appropriate that they now be
> officially endorsed.    
> 
> Does anyone have any comments on these 2 proposals before they are submitted
> to the WGAS FITS committee?
> 
> Bill Pence, NASA/GSFC
> Doug Tody, NOAO
> Bill Cotton, NRAO
> 
> 
> Proposal 1:
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>        Recommendation to Incorporate the "Variable Length Array" 
>           Facility in Binary Tables into the FITS Standard
> 
>      W.D. Pence (NASA/GSFC), D. Tody (NOAO), and W.D. Cotton (NRAO)
>                            2 November 2001
> 
> 
> The "Variable Length Array" FITS data format that is described in Appendix
> B.1 of the FITS Standard is now used by a number of major data analysis
> packages.  Examples of current usage include the "Redistribution Matrix
> Files" (RMF), widely used in X-ray astronomy to store calibration
> information about the instrumental detector gain and detector energy
> resolution, and the pixel mask files used in the IRAF system.   Several
> software systems provide general capabilities for reading and writing data
> in this variable length array format, including the CFITSIO library
> (maintained by the HEASARC at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) and IRAF.
> 
> Appendix B.1 is not an official part of the FITS Standard and is included in
> that document for informational purposes only.  We believe that the
> implementations described above have now fully demonstrated the usefulness
> and importance of the Variable Length Array Facility, and thus we hereby
> propose that Appendix B.1  be officially approved and incorporated onto the
> FITS Standard in its entirety.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Proposal 2:
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>        Recommendation to Incorporate the "Multidimensional Array" 
>           Convention in Binary Tables into the FITS Standard
> 
>      W.D. Pence (NASA/GSFC), D. Tody (NOAO), and W.D. Cotton (NRAO) 
>                            2 November 2001
> 
> Appendix B.2 in the FITS Standard describes a "Multidimensional array"
> convention that uses the TDIMn keyword to define the dimensionality of
> arrays that are contained in binary table columns.  Many FITS files now use
> this convention and contain the TDIMn keyword.  Appendix B.2 is not an
> official part of the FITS Standard, however, and is included in that
> document for informational purposes only.  We believe that the widespread
> usage of the TDIMn keyword demonstrates the usefulness and importance of the
> this convention, and thus we hereby propose that the "Multidimensional
> array" convention described in Appendix B.2 be officially approved and
> incorporated onto the FITS Standard.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> 

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Arnold H. Rots                                Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory                tel:  +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67                              fax:  +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138                             arots at head-cfa.harvard.edu
USA                                     http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
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