Discussion List Archives

[Date Prev][Date Next][Date Index]

(32) Perils of electronic submission

  • To: COMCIFS@iucr.ac.uk
  • Subject: (32) Perils of electronic submission
  • From: bm
  • Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 17:52:15 +0100
Dear Colleagues

D32.1  CIF-style publication mechanisms
---------------------------------------
George Sheldrick has asked me to pass on the following interchange, and his
associated thoughts. Some of these teething troubles are familiar to me from
our experiences at Acta, and I'm a bit rueful that I haven't been more active
in working on this with Phil (ever assuming that he wanted my help!).
However, the silver lining is that the world must now be blessed with two
sites of administrative expertise in handling CIF-like submissions!

G> I thought that COMCIFS members would be amused by my experiences in trying
G> to submit ACA abstracts by CIF.  I must apologize for bringing down the
G> level of our debate by raising such banalities, but the acceptance (or
G> otherwise) of CIF will depend on getting such details right.  They also
G> highlights the difficulties that have to be solved before we allow CIF
G> submission of abstracts for the IUCr Meeting in Seattle, though no doubt
G> Phil would be happy to edit them all again !  There follow edited versions
G> of two emails to Phil.  Unfortunately I shall have to miss the CIF Workshop
G> at the ACA Meeting owing to a prior engagement, but doubtless some of these
G> points will be aired by other participants there.
G> 
G> Dear Phil
G> 
G> Many thanks for sending the abstract template.  I have used it to submit my
G> 2 abstracts.  In my capacity as adviser to COMCIFS I thought that I should
G> also make some comments based on the experience !
G> 
G> 1. Next time, we should try to find a way in which users can verify the
G> syntax of their abstracts before they submit them.  Maybe PRECOMPILED
G> MSDOS, Mac and SGI versions of a program that they could download by ftp.
G> If you had had such a program (!) you would have discovered that the
G> _ACA_author_name loop in your template contains 14 data names and 15
G> values (strings) !  I always said that CIF needed a loop terminator as
G> a backstop (and perhaps different characters to mark the beginning and
G> end of a piece of text, in case one of them gets lost).
G> 
G> Phil replied saying that he would prefer to distribute QUASAR than his own
G> C++ programs, and pointing out that as a result of the syntax error he will
G> have to edit every CIF abstract himself.
G> 
G> 2. As usual, I was writing my abstract at the last minute (maybe I was not
G> the only one to do so) and then I discovered the bit about LATEX at the
G> end of the template.  It is Sunday, so I don't want to pester you by email
G> and anyway your reply might not get back in time, and none of my students
G> who happen to be in the lab. (on Sunday afternnoon) were able to tell me
G> what LATEX is, I can't find it in any of our manuals here, and in your
G> examples you don't say how to make 'o-umlaut' (that's an o with two dots
G> on top) so how do I spell Goettingen correctly and still get my abstract
G> in on time ??  Why on earth didn't you follow the CIF rules for such
G> characters ?? (I know them by heart as a result of submitting papers in
G> CIF to Acta, maybe some other ACA members know them too).
G> 
G> Phil had to admit that he was in NY and had left the book with the 'o-umlaut'
G> in in California, but he kindly offered to post-process 'Goettingen' by hand
G> in my abstracts.
G> 
G> 3. Your instructions imply that a string consisting of a single period and
G> nothing else must be enclosed between quotes, but in your template there is
G> an example that isn't.  I believe that CIF does not require the quotes
G> and ...... is more readable than '.' '.' '.' '.' '.' '.' when (say)
G> repeating an address.
G> 
G> Phil agrees.
G> 
G> 4. I may not be the only non-resident alien who doesn't know what a
G> 'mail stop' is.
G> 
G> Phil has now improved the definition so that even aliens can understand it.
G> 
G> 5. Two participants, both of whom are much more computer-literate than I,
G> have told me that they found the CIF submission too complicated so they
G> had sent in hardcopy instead.  I suspect that they got stuck on the umlaut
G> too but didn't want to admit it.  They also pointed out that the CIF
G> abstract required information (such as the fax numbers of secondary
G> authors) not required for hard-copy submission, and maybe hard to find at
G> short notice.
G> 
G> Despite these teething troubles it's big progress even if it takes twice as
G> long at both ends to get it right.  I am happy to send the abstracts (one is
G> for the SHELX workshop) if they are any use to you.
G> 
G> Best wishes, George
G> 
G> Round 2:
G> -------
G> 
G> From gsheldr Mon Mar 27 16:20:13 1995
G> To: system@cuhhca.hhmi.columbia.edu
G> Subject: CIF abstracts
G> 
G> Dear Phil
G> 
G> I had already emailed my abstracts to Buffalo before my email to you so
G> no need for you to hunt down 'o-umlaut'.  The fact that you couldn't tell
G> me immediately makes my point !  The secret of the SHELX philosophy is that
G> everything is self-contained, defined, and as simple and intuitive as I
G> could devise.  It is best not to expect everyone to compile QUASAR before
G> writing their abstracts - it took me some time until the penny dropped that
G> it was expecting that local varaibles would have the same values next
G> time the subroutine is called (I would never assume this in my own programs)
G> - but providing precompiled versions for common computers would be a step in
G> the right direction.  You would have to provide a file of definitions too of
G> course !  We also found that QUASAR does not flag all syntax errors, but I
G> have forgotten the details now.  I'm afraid that you will need to edit in
G> the umlaut in both my abstracts and also in Isabel Uson's abstract - just
G> change 'oe' to 'o-umlaut' in Goettingen please.  I also had to drop the
G> accents etc. in the names and addresses of my Portugese co-authors, but they
G> are used to that. If you also include the _ACA_author_division in the
G> printed abstract, you will need to change 'ue' to 'u-umlaut' in all three
G> abstracts.
G> 
G> In the meantime Isabel has shown me the abstract she has submitted and we
G> have thought of some more snags.  The reason I am giving these details is
G> so that 'next time' (IUCr in Seattle ?) you might be saved the job of hand
G> editing every abstract.  Here goes:
G> 
G> 6. You define a dot in the address list as meaning 'same as for the primary
G> author'.  Would it have been better to define it as 'same as the previous
G> author' ?  This would simplify the automatic printing of abstracts because no
G> string comparisons are then needed to establish if two people have the same
G> address (e.g. when there is more than one author at a secondary addresses).
G> 
G> 7. Isabel was a little better informed about LATEX so she used it in her
G> name and the names and addresses of her Spanish co-authors.  However before
G> you think that you are winning after all, I should point out that several of
G> these accents contain embedded quotes when expressed in LATEX (as in one of
G> your examples).  Assuming that you parse the CIF before the LATEX, these
G> could have interesting consequences ...
G> 
G> 8. Isabel wanted to include her poster in the 'Problem structures' session.
G> The only way she could find of specifying that was to use this as the value
G> for _ACA_admin_sig.  Is this allowed, and if not what happens when a sig
G> offers two different sessions ?
G> 
G> 9. I consider the relative advantages and disadvantages of oral or poster
G> presentation to be finely balanced, and anyway I would like to make life
G> easier for the session chairperson, so I put 'oral or poster' as the
G> value of _ACA_admin_session_type.  Is this allowed and if not what should
G> I have done ?
G> 
G> 10. Does WWW use LATEX - it looks rather similar ?  If not why not ?
G> 
G> I apologize for being so pernickity, but after all I am a crystallographer !
G> 
G> Best wishes, George

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paula will be visiting Chester during the next couple of days, and we plan to
look at several technical issues in the mmCIF implementation. So it will be
back to the tough stuff next time!

Brian