Applying for a COMCIFS workshop at IUCr 2023

Dear COMCIFS,

The deadline for expressions of interest for IUCr2023 workshops is next Thursday.  One idea for a COMCIFS-backed workshop is a one day Dictionary Writing Workshop along the lines of the one held at Hyderabad back in 2015. My preference would be to focus on DDLm dictionaries, as the wwPDB seems to have a reasonable program of DDL2 dictionary definition development via topic-focused workshops. As a rough outline the following topics might be covered in the workshop:

1. Overview of CIF dictionaries (structure, available dictionaries, role in the crystallographic world, DDL1/DDL2/DDLm)

2. Writing and contributing a new data name definition for an existing dictionary (including introduction to DDLm attributes)

3. Designing and writing a new topic dictionary (from scratch to a complete dictionary)

4. Using Github for rapid, collaborative dictionary development

5. (?) Writing dictionary-aware CIF software

Assuming there are no strong objections to this, I will put in the expression of interest next week.

thanks,

James.

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