Re: [magCIF] magCIF working group
- To: Discussion list for the magnetic CIF dictionary project <magcif@iucr.org>
- Subject: Re: [magCIF] magCIF working group
- From: "Campbell, Branton" <branton@physics.byu.edu>
- Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2014 04:13:28 +0000
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- In-Reply-To: <CAM+dB2dyONwGRDYhakki+=DNeifd0SOh4gu-HLBFmaX7Yc1D8g@mail.gmail.com>
- References: <430A6277358CE34E95A8748DCB3548670270C3D0@POLARIS.physics.byu.edu><CAM+dB2dyONwGRDYhakki+=DNeifd0SOh4gu-HLBFmaX7Yc1D8g@mail.gmail.com>
I appreciate the positive comments from James. Suppose that we use category.item for tags in the new magCIF dictionary. Then also suppose that half the relevant magnetic software packages in the world are
willing to read/write category.item, but that the other half decide to read/write category_item instead for the same tags (not an unlikely scenario). If I want my own software to be compatible with all relevant software packages, what am I to do? It seems
that I must simultaneously read/write both category.item and category_item for the same tag, which would be very unpleasant. Best, Branton From: magcif-bounces@iucr.org [mailto:magcif-bounces@iucr.org]
On Behalf Of James Hester Dear magCIF members, Let me clarify and expand on a few of Branton's points. Note that officially, neither '.' nor '_' carry any syntactical or semantic meaning in a dataname. Conventionally in DDL2 and DDLm dictionaries a '.' separates the category from the object name, but this is
purely convention and therefore software should not rely on it. Furthermore, because in DDL1 datanames no such convention applies, '.' is just another character and datanames containing '.' are in no way more or less acceptable. Therefore, I would strongly
urge that all new magCIF datanames contain a '.' according to the DDL2/m convention, as such datanames conform with DDL1, DDL2 and DDLm conventions. There is absolutely no practical issue with datafiles containing datanames some of which have '.' and some
of which don't. I imagine that software authors in the magCIF domains will simply treat the dataname as a string of characters (as they should) that they use to read/write a value in a file, and the presence or absence of '.'
or '_' should be completely irrelevant in this form of usage. Given this, I do not see the point of defining two new datanames for each concept. For what it's worth, I think Branton's suggestion of developing the basic information in a simple ASCII file is by far the best way to proceed. all the best, (COMCIFS chair) On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 1:01 PM, Campbell, Branton <branton@physics.byu.edu> wrote: Dear magCIF working group members (and others),
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