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Re: [ddlm-group] Case sensitivity

Dear Colleagues,

   The issue of case sensitivity of data names is the same as was faced for 
HTML, and I believe we must make the same compromise -- having multiple
flavors of the specification, at the very least:

   1.  A case-insentitive version to avoid breaking existing data sets; and
   2.  A case-sensitive version as the direction for the future

   Regards,
      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
=====================================================

On Mon, 11 Jan 2010, Joe Krahn wrote:

> If the consensus is lower-case data names, why not make this part of the
> CIF2 standard?
>
> My suggestion is that every data name should have a "printed form"
> defined in the dictionary. That allows upper-case, spaces, subscripts,
> etc. Then, the item name "I_over_sigmaI" can be written as something
> like "I / sigma(I)". Maybe some already do this?
>
> With UTF-8 support, names can include non-ASCII characters, such as
> Greek letters. If non-ASCII characters are used, it might be good to
> have a plain ASCII alias rather than assume that UTF-8 is ubiquitous.
>
> Joe
>
>
> David Brown wrote:
>> There was discussion about case sensitivity of data names at the COMCIFS
>> meeting in Osaka.  My recollection is that we agreed that names should
>> be case sensitive, and to avoid problems with having two data names that
>> differ only in their cases, all data names should be lower case.  There
>> are legacy problems because in DDL1 the data names are case insensitive,
>> and while most of the names have been written in lower case, upper case
>> letters have been traditionally used for proper names, e.g.,
>> _space_group_name_Hall.  There may well be legacy CIFs in which only
>> lower case letters have been used but probably not many.
>>
>> DAvid
>>
>> Joe Krahn wrote:
>>> Is there any interest in making CIF2 case-sensitive, at least data names?
>>>
>>> There was some discussion that names may eventually extend into the UTF
>>> range, even though it would be avoided for the near future. That
>>> complicates case-insensitive matching, because standard library
>>> functions are locale dependent. If data names are not strictly limited
>>> to 7-bit ASCII, it would be good to make names case-sensitive.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Joe Krahn
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> ddlm-group mailing list
>>> ddlm-group@iucr.org
>>> http://scripts.iucr.org/mailman/listinfo/ddlm-group
>>
>>
>
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