Discussion List Archives

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[ddlm-group] Feedback on draft CIF2 specification from JohnBollinger

Dear all,

If you haven't seen John Bollinger's useful feedback on our draft CIF2 specification, I recommend that you read it at

http://www.iucr.org/__data/iucr/lists/cif-developers/msg00269.html

My response is as follows:

Points 1-8,10-13, 16, 19,23-26: editorial points with which I agree
Point 9: if the CIF2 header characters are missing, I suggest the file is treated as a CIF1 file.  This should be clarified in the spec.
Point 14: matching with the global, save, data etc. keywords should be case-insensitive.  This should be clarified in the spec
Point 15: (disallowing delimiters in strings).  Despite John's objections, I think this is a useful simplification which helps newcomers.  I believe that the PDB has deliberately started 'normalising' their files to remove embedded delimiters, which indicates to me that embedded delimiters are not a useful CIF1 feature.
Point 17,20: Yes, whitespace is allowed between opening/closing brackets and the first/last element.  Should be clarified
Point 18,22: semicolon delimited strings should be allowed as list and table elements.  Clarify in spec.
Point 21: while triple-quote delimited strings as table labels should be OK, allowing non-delimited strings as labels would require further restricting the character set of non-delimited strings to avoid e.g. <semicolon> appearing and confusing the parser (as we have discussed previously).  Using quotes just makes those sort of problems go away

Do others have any further comments?

James.
--
T +61 (02) 9717 9907
F +61 (02) 9717 3145
M +61 (04) 0249 4148
_______________________________________________
ddlm-group mailing list
ddlm-group@iucr.org
http://scripts.iucr.org/mailman/listinfo/ddlm-group

Reply to: [list | sender only]
International Union of Crystallography

Scientific Union Member of the International Science Council (admitted 1947). Member of CODATA, the ISC Committee on Data. Partner with UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in the International Year of Crystallography 2014.

International Science Council Scientific Freedom Policy

The IUCr observes the basic policy of non-discrimination and affirms the right and freedom of scientists to associate in international scientific activity without regard to such factors as ethnic origin, religion, citizenship, language, political stance, gender, sex or age, in accordance with the Statutes of the International Council for Science.