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Re: [ddlm-group] options/text vs binary/end-of-line. .. .

As Simon says, to agree to this wording requires agreeing to multiple
encodings.  We have not agreed to that yet.  I would however agree to
the following wording, which has removed any reference to encoding,
and inserted John's suggestion for EOL treatment.

"CIF2 is a specification for the interchange of text files.This
document is therefore written
in terms of a sequence of Unicode code points.  Particular care must
be taken with treatment of newline in text files. This document will
only refer to <0x000A> as a line terminator, as CIF2 processors are
required to map <0x000D>, <0x000A> and <0x000D><0x000A> to this
character.

To ensure compatibility with older Fortran text processing software,
lines in CIF2 files should be restricted to no more than 2048
code points in length, not including the line terminator itself."

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 3:44 AM, Herbert J. Bernstein
<yaya@bernstein-plus-sons.com> wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
>
>   The IUCr is an international organization.  Is it really politically
> wise to insist that CIF2 tags be restricted to unaccented roman letters?
>
>   Before we go much further, may we please have a vote on explicitly
> changing CIF2 from the current draft wording that it is a binary
> format to the wording I suggested making it a text format.  Most of the
> rest of the issues we are dealing with hinge on that basic decision.
>
>   The wording I proposed was:
>
> "CIF2 is a specification for the interchange of text files.  Text files
> have many possible system dependent represenations and encodings.  To
> ensure clarity in the specification of CIF2, this document is written
> in terms of a sequence of unicode code points, and all fully compliant
> CIF2 processing systems should, at a minimum be able to process
> text files as unicode code points represented in UTF-8, subject to the
> XML-based restrictions below.  This approach is not meant to prevent
> people from preparing valid CIF2 files with non-UTF-8-based text
> editors, but, if a non-UTF-8 file format is produced, it is important
> to clearly specify the intended mapping to UTF-8.  This is particularly
> important in dealing with end-of-line indicators (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline).  When handling CIF2 files
> produced under MS windows, CR-LF sequences should be accepted as
> an alternative to LF, and when handling CIF2 files produced under
> Mac OS, CR should be accepted as an alternative to LF.  This document
> will only refer to LF as a line terminator and will assume that some
> appropriate system-dependent text processing system will handle
> the necessary conversion.
>
> To ensure compatibility with older Fortran text processing software,
> lines in CIF2 files should be restricted to no more than 2048
> code points in length, not including the line temrinator itself.
> Not that the UTF-8 encoding of such a line may well be much longer."
>
> If anybody objects to some specific wording in this text, let us
> settle on revised wording.  We need to get this basic issue
> clarified in writing or we will be going in circles forever.
>
>
>   Regards,
>     Herbert
>
>
>
> At 11:30 AM -0500 6/21/10, Bollinger, John C wrote:
>>On Monday, June 21, 2010 1:13 AM, James Hester wrote:
>>
>>>I prefer the XML treatment of newline (ie translated to 0x000A for
>>>processing purposes).  I would be in favour of restricting newline to
>>><0x000A>, <0x000D> or <0x000D 0x000A>, which means that only these
>>>combinations have the syntactic significance of a newline.
>>
>>I would be satisfied with that approach.
>>
>>>  From
>>>memory, this significance is restricted to:
>>>
>>>1. end of comment
>>>2. whitespace
>>>3. use in <eol><semicolon> digraph
>>
>>The significance also extends to 'single'- and "double"-quote
>>delimited data values, in that these cannot contain end-of-line.
>>
>>>I would also restrict the appearance of the remaining Unicode newline
>>>characters to delimited datavalues, to maintain consistent display of
>>>data files.
>>
>>I'm seeing more and more upside to restricting *all* non-ASCII
>>characters to delimited data values.  I don't have any objection to
>>restricting U+0085, U+2028, and U+2029 (did I miss any?) to such
>>contexts.
>>
>>
>>John
>>--
>>John C. Bollinger, Ph.D.
>>Department of Structural Biology
>>St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Email Disclaimer:  www.stjude.org/emaildisclaimer
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>ddlm-group mailing list
>>ddlm-group@iucr.org
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>
>
> --
> =====================================================
>  Herbert J. Bernstein, Professor of Computer Science
>    Dowling College, Kramer Science Center, KSC 121
>         Idle Hour Blvd, Oakdale, NY, 11769
>
>                  +1-631-244-3035
>                  yaya@dowling.edu
> =====================================================
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>



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