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[ddlm-group] Handling single string values longer than maximum linelength
- To: ddlm-group@iucr.org
- Subject: [ddlm-group] Handling single string values longer than maximum linelength
- From: Brian McMahon <bm@iucr.org>
- Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:18:44 +0000
> (I've switched the thread title to deal separately with line folding.) Well, I didn't because I was distracted when about to hit the 'Send' button! So this is just a repeat of the previous posting but under a new thread in case we wish to take up this general discussion later. Regards Brian As Herbert says, line folding is part of the CIF 1.1 spec (pages 34-35 of the ITG bible). Currently, it invokes a special meaning for the backslash (reverse solidus) character, but only when it is the first non-blank after an opening semicolon or comment hash delimiter. We have yet to discuss whether to extend it to other string types (specifically the triple-quoted strings). It's quite easy these days to generate single strings that are longer than 2048 characters (or any other arbitrary line limit) - e.g. a protein or nucleic acid sequence. Many, many chemical names broke the old 80-character line length limit. We're very happy with CIF applications that do not interpret the line-folding protocol, so long as they preserve the existing backslashes. However, a fully-compliant CIF 1.1 parser should be able to return an unfolded string to an application that requests it. As Herbert says, if this were dropped as part of the CIF2 specification, we would need to think carefully about how else to retain this functionality. Regards Brian On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 07:54:51AM -0500, Herbert J. Bernstein wrote: > The line folding protocol was discussed and adopted by COMCIFS and is > posted, aong with other "Common Semantic Features" at > > http://www.iucr.org/resources/cif/spec/version1.1/semantics > > but that is neither here nor there. The point is that the IUCr uses CIF > to get work done. If we disable something they are using, we should offer > some equivalent functionality so they can use CIF 2 to do their work. > Otherwise, they will have to do the sensible thing, and continue to use > CIF 1, or, worse, create their own dialect of CIF 2. > > Now, I broke my nose yesterday morning and find myself a bit punchy today, > so I will drop out of this discussion for a while. Hopefully, when I > return to it, this whole matter will be settled in some way that will > allow people to actually use CIF 2, instead of it becoming what it seems > on its way to becoming -- something elegant but not terrible useful, a bit > like PL/I. > > Cheers, > Herbert > > ===================================================== > 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 > ===================================================== _______________________________________________ ddlm-group mailing list ddlm-group@iucr.org http://scripts.iucr.org/mailman/listinfo/ddlm-group
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