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Re: [ddlm-group] CIF-2 changes

Actually, there is a large and growing collection of imgCIF files.
Fortunately, I don't think any of the tags used are illegal under
the CIF2 rules.  For them the problem will be the change in the
format of the MIME binaries.

=====================================================
  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 Wed, 18 Nov 2009, David Brown wrote:

> 
> 
> Herbert J. Bernstein wrote:
> 
> With the divergence between CIF 1.1 and CIF 2 and the application of the
> aliases, this has now become challenging.  We want the software writers to 
> handle both CIF 1.1 and CIF 2 documents, but we want users to be 
> encouraged to write clean CIF 2 documents, not relying on aliases except
> when necessary.
> 
> >From a practical aspect aliases will be with us for a long time for the
> following reasons.
> 
> 1. They will be with us for a long time since it will take time for all the
> systems currently producing CIF1 (e.g., SHELX) to convert,
> 
> 2. There will be little lncentive for this to occur in the short term
> because the current software is unable to read CIF2.  We should encourage
> people to write as much software in CIF2.0 because this will be able to read
> CIF1 as well (using aliases), we will not be able to persuade them to write
> CIF data files in CIF2.0 until a;; the programs they like to use are able to
> read CIF2.  We may have to settle for a CIF2 -> CIF1 converter for people
> who have programs that may never be converted because their authors are no
> longer around to make the change.
> 
> 3. There is a large archive of CIF1s out there (e.g., in associated with
> Actas Cryst. papers) for which there are no plans to convert on the grounds
> that CIF2 programs can by defiition read any archived CIF. I suspect that
> for a while at least Acta will have to make their CIFs available in both
> standards with CIF1 being needed for legacy applications. 
> 
> We should recognize that aliases are going to be with us for the long haul
> and in principle indefinitely.  However, a complete conversion may be
> possible with some CIFs such as imgCIF, where there is not yet a significant
> legacy, or where archiving the CIF is not envisaged.
> 
> David
> 
> 
>
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