[AstroPy] Re: HIERARCH

[Jin-chung Hsu]

>I'm a bit worried that you're so quick to abandon maintainable and
>extensible code for efficiency, given just one pathological case.
>
Please not be so quick to make your judgement based on its face value.  
This is just one of the reasons.

>Since HIERARCH is used by all ESO headers, we lose a substantial
>fraction of European astronomers if we don't support it.  
>
Maybe.  I have no idea how many astronomers use ESO data and how many of 
them do access the HIERARCH keywords.  We did get 2 or 3 such requests 
in the last year or two. 

>>I am confident that if we just 
>>implement the read, someone else will come around and ask for the
>>write.
>>    
>>
>
>Perhaps.  So give them a simple string write.  It should be equally
>easy to implement.  The hard thing is to actually implement a data
>structure read/write from the hierarchy, with all the elements typed
>
That's right.  It is not hard to just write the card image.  In fact, it 
can be done now.  But I was alluding to people who want to do:

hdu.header['very long keyword']='a new value'

>>But shouldn't the "keyword" in this 
>>be "ESO TEL AIRM START" without the "HIERARCH" (or maybe even without 
>>the "ESO")?
>>    
>>
>
>I don't care, I just wanna read the sucker so I can analyze my
>
Well, I have heard the other way too.  So, we do need a "standard".  
Other users may want to give their input?

JC