The new draft of the FITS Standard (available from
http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/) does not propose any changes at all to the
definition or use of random groups. One of the proposed changes,
however, is to require that the PCOUNT and GCOUNT keywords must
immediately follow the last NAXISn keyword in all conforming extensions,
but this does not apply to random groups. The Standard tries to make a
clear distinction between the random groups structure and conforming
extensions, so hopefully there should be no confusion between the 2.

Bill Pence

Peter Teuben wrote:
On [Thu Aug 16 08:18], Eric Greisen wrote:
Random groups is by no means a dead format. Following the lead of the
FITS community I added to AIPS the ability to write interferometer
visibility data using binary table format instead. I believe that
none of the other major interferometry packages (casa, difmap, miriad,
etc) can read data written this way. They all read data written in
the random groups format and future plans seem to be more of the
same.

gosh, Miriad sure seems so old now, but we totally rely on the random
groups format for input/output to other packages. So, random groups may
be old, but it works and isn't broken.

- peter
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Dr. William Pence
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