Re: [ddlm-group] Summary of proposed CIF syntax changes

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From: Joe Krahn <krahn@niehs.nih.gov>
To: Group finalising DDLm and associated dictionaries <ddlm-group@iucr.org>
Sent: Friday, 4 December, 2009 20:23:09
Subject: Re: [ddlm-group] Summary of proposed CIF syntax changes

SIMON WESTRIP wrote:
> I agree that a "rationale for all of the quotation rule
> changes" might be welcome - I can imagine that at first glance many people
> will wonder what the """ and ''' are for.
>
> I'm not sure that hinting that comma-separated lists
> are also a possibilty is going to help matters?
My willingness to support commas is partly because Herbert finds it
usefule, and has already implemented it. Maybe the comma-delimited
variant can be useful as a CIF 1.5 transitional form?

> Afterall, when it comes down to it, until there are
> dictionaries that comply to CIF2, many disciplines
> that already make use of CIF will find it difficult to
> adopt CIF2 because their current dictionaries will be invalidated by
> the restrictions on the dataname character set?
Name changes are not uncommon, at least for mmCIF. Hopefully, dictionary
aliases will ease the conversion. It would also help if early CIF2
software should probably allow CIF1 names within the CIF2 syntax, with
warnings, and just exclude them from dREL.

Joe
>
> Cheers
>
> Simon
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Joe Krahn <krahn@niehs.nih.gov>
> *To:* Group finalising DDLm and associated dictionaries
> <ddlm-group@iucr.org>
> *Sent:* Friday, 4 December, 2009 17:49:01
> *Subject:* Re: [ddlm-group] Summary of proposed CIF syntax changes
>
> The summary did not include a rationale for all of the quotation rule
> changes, which is the area that makes the least sense to me.
>
> The section defining the rationale for not allowing lexical characters
> outside the 7-bit range (the first Reasoning paragraph) might mention
> that it affords faster parsing by deferring any UTF-8 conversions.
>
> I see that the commas were left out of the list syntax. It may be good
> to put a short paragraph about the alternative comma-delimited syntax,
> so that other people reviewing the proposal have a chance to comment.
>
> Thanks,
> Joe Krahn
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