Release 1.14.0 Full Image compression support Image compression and tiling are now fully supported by nom-tam-fits. A 100% Java implementation of the compression libraries available in cfitsio was implemented. An API for easy handling of compressed images is now provided. Support for binary table compression and the NULL_PIXEL_MASK features is anticipated in the next release. When [de]compressing all available CPU's are automatically utilized. Internal compression allows FITS files to be created where the data are efficiently stored, but the metadata is still easily accessible. The tiling of images is particularly critical for supporting efficient access to subsets of very large images. A user can easily access only the tiles that overlap the region of interest and can skip data not of interest. While some skipping might be possible with uncompressed FITS files (i.e., read only the rows overlapping the desired subset), internal tiles can be much more efficient when the image is substantially larger than the subset. Most compression algorithms interfere with the ability to skip uninteresting data, but tiles are compressed independently, so users can benefit both from the compression and the selection of only a subset of the image. *** Changes to compile and run time behavior *** The procedure for building the library from the source is substantially revised. We recommend that users who wish source access download from the GitHub site (http://github.com/nom.tam.fits/nom.tam.fits) and use Maven for building. However building from the source jar is not difficult and full instructions are given in the BUILD documentation file at http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/fits/java/v1.0/BUILD . Issues include: - Source files may include UTF8 characters so that compilation should use the -encoding UTF8 flag - There are some external dependencies needed for compilation (but not generally for runtime except when decompressing bzip compressed files) - The library uses resources files that are anticipated to be in specific locations. Thus users should normally use the library compiled into a jar file to ensure that these are found when needed. - The decompression of tile-compressed images uses worker threads which must either be terminated using the appropriate method in FitsFactory or by explicitly calling System.exit() to end the program. ***************************************************** Other changes in this edition include: - Added a [de]compression API supporting all compression methods in the proposed updates to the FITS standard. - Wrong checksum calculation corrected. - Some problems with data segments that are bigger than 2GB corrected. - Header parsing performance optimization. - Comment style cards with a empty key value can now be used multiple times. - Alignment of hierarch headercard values deactivated. - The formatting of hierarch card keys can mow be be controlled. Two formats are provided.