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Re: [ddlm-group] CIF 1.5

Herbert J. Bernstein wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
>    I respectfully disagree.  Indeed, I strongly disagree with almost every
> aspect of the recent CIF 2 decisions.  However, I have had my say.  Let
> us finish the design of something and get it into use.
> 

Instead of CIF 1.5, maybe CIF1.1 software can initially use lists stored 
as strings? That way, file I/O is still CIF1.1, but you can implement a 
CIF2 list parser on the application side to deal with lists. In fact, 
that might be a good first step before finalizing CIF2 syntax, to make 
sure there are no design flaws in the list syntax.

I also disagree with many of the CIF2 changes. CIF2 seems to be aiming 
towards a Python influenced syntax, rather than just keeping with the 
original concept of CIF being simple and efficient. Unfortunately, that 
is just the way humans work. The important thing is to make sure that 
the syntax is precisely defined, so there are no parsing ambiguities.

Joe Krahn


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