[AstroPy] FITS files and column descriptions

[Michael Droettboom]

On 11/07/2013 04:20 PM, Yannick Roehlly wrote:
> 3. Column descriptions in VO-Table
>
> When saving a table to VO-Table, astropy prettily indent the xml, e.g.
>
>      <DESCRIPTION>
>       IAU Name
>      </DESCRIPTION>
>
> But when reading these tables with topcat, this one add the spaces to
> the description ("     IAU Name"). Maybe astropy should write the
> description on one line.
>

I'll just address this part and leave the others to those more heavily 
involved with the FITS side of things.

XML basically punts on whitespace handling, by saying that each 
"application of XML" (in this case, VOTable) should define how 
whitespace should be handled.  Unfortunately, the VOTable spec is silent 
on this issue, so in effect, "we're both right".  HTML, as an 
application of XML, would ignore the leading whitespace.

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-white-space

We should probably get some clarification from the VOTable committee on 
this point.  I'll write an e-mail to votable at ivoa.net

Mike

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