[fitsbits] INHERIT and Hierarchical Grouping

Steve Allen wrote:
My initial impression was that the Hierarchical Grouping Convention
(HGC) was initially a way of handling interconversions between FITS
files and HDF files. That made it seem like "feature envy", and also
like a solution in search of a problem.

Here's the history as far as I remember it:

The first draft of the grouping convention was written by Don Jennings
in May 1994, and was designed for use in the HDF -- FITS data file
conversion project. The first really major application of the grouping
convention didn't occur, however, until a few years later when Jennings
began working for the INTEGRAL Gamma-ray satellite project; The grouping
convention solved a major problem they had in how to manage the hundreds
of individual FITS files than could be generated by a single
observation. Support for the grouping convention is built into the
INTEGRAL Data Access Layer software, and the API for creating and
managing grouping tables (written by Jennings) was added to CFITSIO in
approximately 1999.

Bill
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Dr. William Pence
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