The question of compreession of FITS data was raised in the early 1990s
(Archie Warnock et al.), but what with all the more pressing things like
WCS (-: it never got off the ground. Later came the Rick White et al.
(1999) proposal. The latter has a selection of compression algorithms
including the general Rice method. While the latter is implemented in
CFTISIO, it's not part of the standard, so I think it would be a bit
naughty to issue such data to general users. With FITS you should
consider the recipient; can they interpret your file correctly? I
thought such compressed-FITS files were for data transfer from Hawaii to
CASU, and users wouldn't be getting their hands on them. If WFCAM
reduced data in this format are going on general release, at least we
have a little advance warning, before users complain; an earlier heads
up from CASU before compressed-FITS data were created would have been
courteous.
Malcolm
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