Re: gzipped images in SIAP 1.0

From: Rob Seaman <seaman-at-noao.edu>
Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 07:01:13 -0700


> RFC4047 says:
>
> A FITS file described with the media type "image/fits" SHOULD be
> principally intended to communicate the single data array in the
> PHDU.
"Should be principally intended"? This is completely unconstraining - subjunctive conditional good intentions. I'll have to remember that for my next performance review...

Mark Taylor wrote:

> as I understand it tile-compressed FITS images are stored in a
> BINTABLE
> extension (hence not the PHDU), so they should properly be described
> as application/fits and not image/fits.

The point I was trying to make was that a tile compressed FITS files remains an image. It is represented (that is, "encoded") as a bintable. Any FITS can be application/fits. An image/fits says "I represent a single image". A content encoding could then be applied to that to turn the stream of bytes into anything else, including (potentially) a bintable.

Rob Received on 2007-05-23Z16:01:59