[fitsbits] Start of the 'INHERIT' Public Comment Period

William Pence wrote:

Maybe I'm missing your point, but I don't see how that paper can be
interpreted as an endorsement of the inherit convention.

It can't. The fact that the paper attempted to force a particular
outcome - that primary HDUs not be empty - and that empty primary
HDUs have instead become widespread, respected usage was my
(admittedly obscure) point.

A FITS file is either conforming or it isn't. Nothing requires that
HDUs not be empty, for whatever purpose. Users are also permitted to
define new keywords with new interpretations.

In this case, fundamental goals of DB normalization drive the
existence of a primary header to contain keywords that apply to all
other extensions in a file. There are reasons more basic than not
consuming an additional N*80 bytes (1.2 KB for each Mosaic keyword)
for not duplicating redundant keywords.

Some might suggest that with the abundance of low cost disk space
that is now available, the inherit convention is trying to fix a
non-problem.

The diskspace may be a non-problem (although this is a quirky opinion
coming from a FITS compression stalwart :–), but the underlying
question is about the purpose of registering conventions in the first
place.

I would have thought that the key goal was to collect descriptions of
local usage, not to vet long-established usage against esthetic
criteria. By insisting on the latter, the danger is that conventions
will go unregistered, perhaps undocumented. Is this a preferred
outcome?

If the warning:

"These conventions are not necessarily endorsed by the IAU FITS
Working Group."

is not deemed strong enough, how about labeling *all* of the
conventions with something snarkier? There is nothing demonstrably
less conforming to the standard about INHERIT than any other convention.

I also suggest deleting the entire section "Practical Considerations"
from http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/registry/inherit/
fits_inheritance.txt. It amounts to nothing more than stating that
unusual things might happen if files are run through software that
doesn't know about the particular convention. This applies to all
conventions (and all software), and it seems to this observer that
INHERIT is rather more user friendly in such a case than most.

Rob