[Cif2-encoding] [ddlm-group] options/text vs binary/end-of-line . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .

[James Hester]

I agree that CIF1 is not *defined* as ASCII-only, and I have no wish
to push for any redefinition.  I am stating that CIF1 is used by the
community *as if* it were ASCII-only. When speculating about the
community response to CIF2, the actual community response to the CIF1
standard is a perfectly reasonable starting point.

Are you suggesting that a CIF1 application that accepts only ASCII
encoding is not standards conformant?  Because all that I am asserting
is that useful CIF1 programs that support non-ASCII encodings are
either rare or non-existent, despite being allowed by the standard.  I
see no hint of non-standards-conforming programs in this description.

On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 2:02 PM, Herbert J. Bernstein
<yaya at bernstein-plus-sons.com> wrote:
> This sounds like circular reasoning, using non-standard-conforming
> applications as the definition of CIF1 and encouraging the creation
> of more non-standard-conforming software.  If CIF1 is to be redefined,
> then the proposed redefinition should be clearly stated and
> proposed to the community or COMCIFS is failing in its primary
> responsibility.  Until some sort of a new CIF1 ASCII-only-based
> definition is put forward, discussed and accepted,  I don't think it is
> appropriate to call that CIF1.
>
>
>
> =====================================================
>  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 at dowling.edu
> =====================================================
>
> On Fri, 3 Sep 2010, James Hester wrote:
>
>> Herbert, you will note that I carefully wrote "de-facto" ASCII, by
>> which I mean that virtually, if not all, software for doing "useful
>> work" with CIF, such as structural display programs, syntax checkers,
>> refinement programs etc. read and write ASCII only.  So while you can
>> produce an EBCDIC or UTF16 encoded CIF1 file and proudly proclaim that
>> it is CIF1 conformant, good luck in your quest to do useful work with
>> it: you won't be able to input it as a starting model in any
>> crystallographic packages, CheckCIF will complain, you won't be able
>> to display the structure in all those nice programs...so in practice
>> you are restricted to ASCII.  As an additional and far more
>> significant restriction, regardless of your CIF1 encoding, you must
>> use only characters appearing in the ASCII character set in your CIF
>> file.
>>
>> My point being that UTF8-only CIF2 is *less* restrictive than the
>> successful CIF1 standard, because more code points are available, with
>> the same range of encoding schemes (i.e. effectively *one* encoding
>> only).
>>
>> If the only non-UTF8 use case will be imgCIF (that would appear to be
>> the only non-ASCII use case for CIF1), we need to discuss this
>> explicitly.
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 9:24 PM, Herbert J. Bernstein
>> <yaya at bernstein-plus-sons.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Um, but CIF1 is _not_ ascii-only.  It is text in any acceptable local
>>> encoding.
>>>
>>> =====================================================
>>>  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 at dowling.edu
>>> =====================================================
>>>
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