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Re: [ddlm-group] Data-name character restrictions - one last time

Personally, I would greatly prefer to allow all data names that do not
create a major lexer/parser conflict to appear in a data CIF and
only apply the strong restrictions to data names that appear in CIF2
dictionaries as defined data names (not as aliases).  -- Herbert


At 2:40 PM +0000 12/9/09, Brian McMahon wrote:
>I have one remaining niggle that I'd like to revisit before we put
>this finally to bed. As has been mentioned a couple of times
>recently, restricting the data-name character set does invalidate
>syntactically many existing CIF 1 files (e.g. _refine_ls_shift/esd_max ).
>We have discussed strategies for handling this, and I think these
>are workable strategies, but will involve investment and hence expense
>in workflow management in CIF archives.
>
>I understand the rationale behind this restriction is to simplify
>future processing of data names in areas such as dREL
>applications. The question really is whether we're choosing the right
>trade-off in making things cleaner at that end of the processing
>chain. I would suppose that a dREL or other application could ingest a
>data name with dangerous characters, convert it internally into a
>"safe" identifier that's used for all processing, and then restore the
>original form upon output; but writing that intermediate layer of
>processing is of course expensive (especially if there aren't readily
>available libraries that will do this transparently).
>
>I suspect that some of the original proposed syntactic changes also
>had the effect (whether by design or collaterally) of simplifying i/o,
>data structure management, symbol table processing etc., but those may
>have suffered in the subsequent revision exercise we've just been
>practising. Given the consensus we are now approaching, would the code
>builders now be prepared to incur the addition expense of handling
>"dangerous" data names?
>
>I really don't want to spark off a long discussion on this - if a
>quick round of response shows that there's no appetite to allow
>the additional punctuation characters in data names, I'll accept that
>gracefully.
>
>***
>
>One last comment while I have the floor, though it is related in part
>to the above question. A concern raised in the editorial office was
>that there would be circumstances where users didn't know if they were
>dealing with a CIF 1 or 2 ("users" meaning authors, perhaps resorting
>to the vi editor - and we're imagining most of them are dealing with
>small-molecule/inorganic CIFs). My supposition is that the IUCr
>editorial offices would only want to use CIF2 seriously in association
>with DDLm dictionaries, and that we would expect the revised core
>dictionaries to use the dot component in data names to signal this
>further evolution. So even a superficial glimpse of the middle of a
>CIF would make it clear whether it was CIF1 or CIF2.
>
>Does that fit in with how others see this progressing?
>
>Cheers
>Brian
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-- 
=====================================================
  Herbert J. Bernstein, Professor of Computer Science
    Dowling College, Kramer Science Center, KSC 121
         Idle Hour Blvd, Oakdale, NY, 11769

                  +1-631-244-3035
                  [email protected]
=====================================================
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