[Aavso-photometry] FITS Keyword List

[Michael Newberry]

Pedro,

You've hit squarely upon some of my long-term gripes with FITS. But it's 
what we have and is entrenched so deeply that it will be very hard to dig 
out from under it. But I keep hope alive that it will happen.

Michael

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pedro Pastor" <pps at dlsi.ua.es>
To: <aavso-photometry at mira.aavso.org>
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 5:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Aavso-photometry] FITS Keyword List


> Hi,
>
> I was doubting to chime into this thread, I had decided not, but this last
> message from Dave give the excuse to enter into the discussion (thanks??).
>
> Well, I'm not entering into the "FITS internals" discussion, but the idea
> proposed by Dave is quite appropriate and has a name in Computer Science:
> XML.
>
> I know maybe this is not the forum to evangelize about XML in Astronomy, 
> we
> have VOTable, but to the reach of my knowledge VOTable is a mere 
> "transport"
> of FITS to new (XML) syntax. What we need is a re-definition of the "File
> Metadata Header" for Astronomy producing a conceptual standard independent
> of file formats (like FITS is), technologies (I don't think FITS is 
> UNICODE
> compliant, for example), system vendors (implementation) and users
> (vocabularies). Once this conceptual design is done, XML is the way to go
> for computer implementation. And "a standard" means a global consensus 
> among
> stakeholders and a committee (institution) for preserving and maintaining
> the "standard" (what seem to be missing with FITS).
>
> I've been discussing this topic with different people and the answer is
> always the same: "There are too many FITS files and software tools to move
> to something completely different". Well, I don't think this is a
> "scientific way of thinking", but accepting the point, there are many
> different examples of this kind of problem (and more complex) on several
> other fields of knowledge where this seemed to be a "mission impossible", 
> it
> have been done. Libraries, for example, and the MARC standard. A decade 
> ago
> librarians argued that they would never move from "pure MARC" to some kind
> of XML re-definition (one of the oldest standards in the world, they 
> said),
> and at present is a fact. "The harder to learn a standar is and the closer
> you are to it, the grater the fear to abandom it"
>
> Well, this are my 2 cents, maybe I've been boring you, but it seems like 
> in
> Astronomy all "things" evolve at an astronomical speed.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Pedro
>
>
> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: aavso-photometry-bounces at mira.aavso.org
> [mailto:aavso-photometry-bounces at mira.aavso.org] En nombre de Dave Lane
> Enviado el: sábado, 05 de enero de 2008 0:43
> Para: Michael Newberry
> CC: aavso-photometry at mira.aavso.org
> Asunto: Re: [Aavso-photometry] FITS Keyword List
>
> Michael Newberry wrote:
>> Certainly the image could meet the FITS standard, but that does not
>> necessarily mean that some important keywords it might contain can be
>> understood by any other software. For example, it might use NOISE123
>> for the readout noise, or EXPOSE66 for the exposure time, and the
>> image still would pass the test since the verifier would just assume
>> those 2 keywords are private. But you would run into trouble trying to
>> do photometry on the image because the readout noise and exposure time
>> are not in a readily accessible form.
>>
> One thing that developers of image processing software could do is to is 
> to
> make their software configurable. All that would be needed is settings in
> the software that translates the header key names (and formats if
> appropriate) from the to-be-processed files to the software's expected key
> names. This is not rocket science.
>
> --- Dave
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