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Re: [ddlm-group] Eliding in triple-quoted strings: Proposals C andD. .. .. .. .

On Saturday, January 08, 2011 7:17 AM, Herbert J. Bernstein wrote:
[...]
> It is unfortunate that we are having this discussion without Ralf.

I agree, particularly considering that his original objection appeared to be about the inability to escape the quote delimiter, not necessarily about not having a general escape syntax:

On Monday, December 27, 2010 4:54 PM, Ralf W. Grosse-Kunstleve wrote:
> After careful consideration I vote "no" on the proposed new CIF syntax,
> although I agree with the general direction. I'm deeply concerned about
> introducing new syntax for delimiting strings without solving a
> long-standing problem. James explained to me that the "extra
> multi-line text delimiters are provided to further reduce the likelihood of
> running into text that is impossible to delimit." I strongly believe that
> the problem needs to be solved completely, for example by adopting the
> widely used backslash escape semantics.

I agree that Ralf is right: it would be much better for CIF2 to solve the CIF1 problem that some text cannot be expressed as a CIF data value.

[Herbert wrote:]
> As I feared, we now seem headed towards a decision by this body that will require a full re-opened discussion at the COMCIFS level and and will further delay CIF2, probably for another 3 years.

Ralf's comments give me no reason to believe that he would demand a particular approach to solving the problem.  As I read him, Ralf proposed full Python syntax as a possible solution, not as a necessary one.  Perhaps one of you in direct contact with him would be so kind as to inquire?  Indeed, the Python proposal is only one of two distinct proposals he put on the table himself.  The other is quoted above, though it's a bit vague; Proposal A is one reasonable concrete form of it.

Consider also that the more complex the solution we choose, the more likely it is that some other COMCIFS member would express reservations.


John

--
John C. Bollinger, Ph.D.
Department of Structural Biology
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital


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