Native support for MOC operations in the Java HEALPix package

[Mark Taylor]

On Mon, 20 Oct 2014, Martin Reinecke wrote:

> 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.

Sure.  I've got no objection to providing API to expose this
functionality as long as it's clear that it's not generally recommended
for use as an exchange format.

--
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-9288776  http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/