FITS readers

The automatic conversion does not allow you the full control of the conversion that direct use of a FITS reader offers and it does not deal with the special properties of tape. For full control of the conversion process, you should use the FITS2NDF and MTFITS2NDF commands form the CONVERTpackage. FITS2NDF reads disk FITS files, and MTFITS2NDF reads FITS files from magnetic tape.

For historical reasons, KAPPA contains its own additional FITS readers; FITSIN for reading data from tape, and FITSDIN for reading data from disk. These do not currently have all the features of the corresponding CONVERTcommands (for instance, they do not allow an NDF to be created from a specified FITS extension). For this reason, you should normally use the CONVERT commands described in SUN/55.