Shell program and FITS headers

[Andrew Bennett <andrew.bennett@ns.sympatico.ca>]

I have just sent Tom the latest BasWrite
program that is called from his Basic
program by the one-liner

SHELL "BasWrite.exe " + file1$ + " " + file2$

This version writes absolutely minimal FITS
headers with the smallest number of parameters
to be a legal FITS file (I hope - errors and
omissions excepted: this stuff is developmental!).

It would be very simple indeed to add the ability
to stuff extra precomputed header parameters. I
suggest this should be done by writing the required
parameters to another file.
Choices to be made:

1) Unique file name vs passing header$ via SHELL; I
suggest using the extra parameter to maintain flexibility.

2) Blind copy or parse: I suggest that the stuffing
program should do minimal parsing to ensure that the
header, even if wrong, can be read as a FITS header
without crashing. For example, enforcing the order
and format of the first 5 or 6 items and making sure
that END comes at the end.

Andrew Bennett, Avondale Vineyard