XISF Version 1.0 Specification - DRAFT 9.4 -> Final Specification Document

[Juan Conejero]

A new version of the XISF specification document (public draft 9.4) is now available online:

      http://pixinsight.com/doc/docs/XISF-1.0-spec/XISF-1.0-spec.html

You may need to refresh your browser.

This is virtually the final XISF 1.0 specification document, which I'll release in a few days if there are no further contributions.

The previous drafts 9.3, 9.2 and 9.1 are also available for reference:

      http://pixinsight.com/doc/docs/XISF-1.0-spec-D9.3/XISF-1.0-spec.html
      http://pixinsight.com/doc/docs/XISF-1.0-spec-D9.2/XISF-1.0-spec.html
      http://pixinsight.com/doc/docs/XISF-1.0-spec-D9.1/XISF-1.0-spec.html

As always, the entire PIDoc source code of the latest version is available on our GitHub open source repositories:

      https://github.com/PixInsight/XISF-specification

Main changes:

      - Flexible byte ordering. Individual data blocks can now be stored encoded as little-endian or big-endian in an XISF unit. This allows for optimized access to data structures, tailored to specific hardware architectures. The default byte order is little-endian, which is consistent with the vast majority of systems where XISF is going to be implemented and deployed.

      - Proofreading and error corrections.

This version comes with a first reference implementation in C++. It is part of our standard C++ development framework, the PixInsight Class Library:

      http://pixinsight.com/developer/pcl/doc/html/group__xisf__support.html

The reference implementation can be used to implement XISF support in any application, and of course it does not require a running PixInsight application; just linking a project with the PCL library. This will be publicly available tomorrow.

All comments, suggestions and error reports are welcome.