Subject: XTENSION='IMAGE' text

From: dwells at fits.cx.nrao.edu (Don Wells)
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1991 12:28:42 GMT

I asked J. Ramon Munoz to supply a machine-readable version of the IUE
'IMAGE' proposal, and he has done so, and I have put his text into the
anonymous-FTP server on fits.cx.nrao.edu [192.33.115.8] in directory
FITS/doc:

-rw-r--r--  1 dwells   vlb          6043 Oct 22 08:17 image_extension.txt

This is not the published version. It is "a portion of an internal
note (1988) where a short description of the IMAGE Extension is
given".

NOTE: The XTENSION='IMAGE' proposal is still unofficial. I have heard
that the European FITS committee asked the IUE group to pick another
name so that 'IMAGE' could be reserved for a possible universal
agreement in the FITS community. This would be analogous to the
history of binary tables; originally they were to be called '3DTABLE',
but at the request of the committee members the prototype
implementation was called 'A3DTABLE'.

Donald C. Wells             Associate Scientist        dwells at nrao.edu
National Radio Astronomy Observatory                   +1-804-296-0277
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