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Re: [Cif2-encoding] [ddlm-group] options/text vs binary/end-of-line. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .

This sounds like circular reasoning, using non-standard-conforming
applications as the definition of CIF1 and encouraging the creation
of more non-standard-conforming software.  If CIF1 is to be redefined,
then the proposed redefinition should be clearly stated and
proposed to the community or COMCIFS is failing in its primary
responsibility.  Until some sort of a new CIF1 ASCII-only-based
definition is put forward, discussed and accepted,  I don't think it is 
appropriate to call that CIF1.



=====================================================
  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
=====================================================

On Fri, 3 Sep 2010, James Hester wrote:

> Herbert, you will note that I carefully wrote "de-facto" ASCII, by
> which I mean that virtually, if not all, software for doing "useful
> work" with CIF, such as structural display programs, syntax checkers,
> refinement programs etc. read and write ASCII only.  So while you can
> produce an EBCDIC or UTF16 encoded CIF1 file and proudly proclaim that
> it is CIF1 conformant, good luck in your quest to do useful work with
> it: you won't be able to input it as a starting model in any
> crystallographic packages, CheckCIF will complain, you won't be able
> to display the structure in all those nice programs...so in practice
> you are restricted to ASCII.  As an additional and far more
> significant restriction, regardless of your CIF1 encoding, you must
> use only characters appearing in the ASCII character set in your CIF
> file.
>
> My point being that UTF8-only CIF2 is *less* restrictive than the
> successful CIF1 standard, because more code points are available, with
> the same range of encoding schemes (i.e. effectively *one* encoding
> only).
>
> If the only non-UTF8 use case will be imgCIF (that would appear to be
> the only non-ASCII use case for CIF1), we need to discuss this
> explicitly.
>
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 9:24 PM, Herbert J. Bernstein
> <yaya@bernstein-plus-sons.com> wrote:
>> Um, but CIF1 is _not_ ascii-only.  It is text in any acceptable local
>> encoding.
>>
>> =====================================================
>>  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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