[fitsbits] FITS changes

On Aug 6, 2007, at 6:24 AM, Kevin Thomas wrote:

We need a "Don't Make Me Think" policy with the FITS format.

More standards might benefit from users and programmers having to think.

As a programmer, even after reading the documentation on the FITS
format, I still struggle with the header portion of the file. How
does one know how many 2880 byte chunks preceed the image data????

if (keyword == END) then data follows (but not necessarily image data)

In general, think in terms of 80 character Hollerith card images.
Historical perspective is always of benefit - e.g., the global
comprehension of logarithms has plummeted since the demise of the
slide rule.

Like the ARF files we use currently at my work (defense) the format
is overly complex and poorly thought out.

Rather, its complexity is proportionate to the task - and much
thought and consensus-building (and evolutionary pressure) have gone
into the design choices.

I don't know what ARF is, since google and other web resources are of
little help:

http://www.arf.net (top hit) or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARF (disambiguation, e.g., "Armenian
Revolutionary Federation")

On the other hand, google FITS:

http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov (top hit) and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FITS

from which we find, for instance, that "FITS is the most commonly
used digital file format in astronomy." Rare indeed must be
standards with the overwhelming market penetration of FITS. One also
doubts that the ARF specification is published in the refereed
literatu

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981A%26AS...44..363W

On Aug 6, 2007, at 9:44 PM, Steve Allen wrote:

There weren't any other questions in the original post, so it's
hard to provide any other answers other than to note that FITS was
designed when 32 k was a lot of directly addressable memory, and
everything else was found by running the tape back and forth until
the item in question was either found or not.

More standards could benefit from a similar dose of self-restraint in
minimizing resource requirements. One might have cause, for
instance, to be skeptical that many emerging XML-based standards will
still be in wide use a quarter century hence. (Although one trusts
VOEvent will be one of the shining exceptions :-)

Personally, I'm quite confident that FITS will still be with us in 2032.

Rob Seaman
NOAO
------

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural
rules, or FITS certain definitions (of which its author had quite
probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and
irrepressible freshness. - Edith Wharton