Subject: FITSIO - ANSI C version available

From: William Pence <pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 19:32:47 -0500

Announcing CFITSIO, an ANSI C Version of the FITSIO Library

A beta release of the FITSIO software library, written entirely in ANSI
C, is now available for general use.  The routines in this CFITSIO
library provide a portable interface for reading and writing any type of
FITS format data file.  These C routines are closely modelled after the
Fortran subroutines in the original FITSIO library and provide all the
same functionality.

Because this is a beta release, the documentation is still somewhat
limited.  Please refer to the README file in the release for
information on building and using the library.   Use of the CFITSIO
library is also illustrated in a sample program called cookbook.c which
performs a series of typical operations on some test FITS files.

This version of CFITSIO has been extensively tested, but every single
routine and every possible option have not been tried.  Programmers
should be cautious about using this library for critical work until
after the full CFITSIO release later this spring.  Please report any
problems or suggestions for improvement to the address given below.

Both the CFITSIO (ANSI C) and the FITSIO (Fortran-77) software is
freely available on the WWW at:

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fitsio.html

or via anonymous ftp at: legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov in the software/fitsio/c/
or software/fitsio/fortran/ directories.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Pence
High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
NASA/GSFC
e-mail: pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov
phone: (301)286-4599