Native support for MOC operations in the Java HEALPix package

[Martin Reinecke]

Hi Mark!

> that's an interesting research result, and it might be useful for
> improving efficiency in certain closed contexts.  However, in my
> opinion, it is not a good idea to proliferate format variants or
> provide multiple options for exchanging data formats.  So given that
> MOC already declares NESTED as standard, I would not like to see
> this alternative introduced into MOC I/O libraries in a way which
> would lead to incompatible (or less-compatible) MOC instances
> being generated routinely, e.g. from data services.

Absolutely fine with me. I agree that this will be of interest in rather
specific contexts and don't want to drill holes into a standard that has
just been decided upon :)

That said, it was important to me to raise awareness that such a thing
as a closed Peano-Hilbert curve through all Healpix pixels on a sphere
exists. While I can't think of a really compelling use case myself at
the moment, there might be people who can.

Cheers,
  Martin