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Re: Draft JSON specification, round 2

Dear all,
On 19/04/17 20:20, Robert Hanson wrote:> Do you see these as having a serial array [...]  at the top level or> an associative array {....}?
I would recommend the use of a serial array [...] to preserve the orderof datablocks of input CIF. Some arguments for this approach:
1) Serial array removes the ambiguity of the datablock order in JSON ->CIF conversion, thus different programs will by default producediff-able output;
2) Input CIFs *may* contain two or more datablocks with the same name(i.e. concatenated files, incorrect files), thus CIF -> JSON converterswith top-level object approach must have explicit guidelines which ofthese datablocks will get overwritten or discarded;
3) I am aware of at least one CIF usage that makes use of datablockorder (Toby et al. 2003, https://doi.org/10.1107/S0021889803016819):"The first block in the CIF contains information used in a publication";
4) One can always construct an associative array out of serial array,whereas vice versa is ambiguous.
I understand that top-level object approach should be sufficient for themost of use cases, but I would argue against the loss of order information.
Best regards,Andrius
-- Andrius MerkysPhD student at Vilnius University Institute of Biotechnology, Saulėtekio al. 7, V325LT-10257 Vilnius, LithuaniaLecturer at Vilnius University Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Naugarduko g. 24LT-03225 Vilnius, Lithuania

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