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nexus

Dear Howard, Brian and Peter,

I had a look at Lachlan Cranswick Nexus CD-ROM. This short report will give to
you my feeling about his work.

The basic idea is excellent. The aim is to distribute a number of data available
on the Web on a CD-ROM for those who have a poor or no access at all to the web.
Each time Lachlan makes a reference he gives two links:
 - the true URL
 - the copy of the contents of this URL on the CD-ROM. Thus, whenever possible,
the user may report to the original information. This is a very clever idea.

The CD-ROM is divided in a number of sections
+ references of a number of institutions amd associations
+ scientific pointers
+ software

Obviously the contents is oriented towards Lachlan's primary interests. There are
many references to mineralogy, powder diffraction and databases related to these
subjects. The same is true for the software. No reference at all (or very few)
to biocrystallography for instance.

The list of institutions has the same limitation: IUCr references are all
included as well as a very limited number of crystallographic institutions. I do
not know why other are not mentioned. For instance a reference is made towards
the Synchrotron facility in Taiwan but not to the other ones.

References are also made to some personal pages but I do not understand how the
selection has been made.

Thus I will conclude that Nexus is, for the moment, a good project, but limited
to some fields of crystallography and with a selection of pointers based on the
personal interests of the author.

Yves
-----

 Yves EPELBOIN
 E-mail: epelboin@lmcp.jussieu.fr - http://www.lmcp.jussieu.fr/~epelboin
      Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris VI
      Case  115 -- 4, place Jussieu --  F-75252 Paris Cedex 05
      phone: (00 33)  01 44 27 52 11   --   fax: (00 33) 01 44 27 37 85

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