[Cif2-encoding] How we wrap this up

Bollinger, John C John.Bollinger at STJUDE.ORG
Tue Sep 28 21:56:24 BST 2010


On Tuesday, September 28, 2010 2:19 PM, SIMON WESTRIP wrote:

> Perhaps it might further your cause to
>present your proposal more completely, and define "text" and "text file" sufficient to program to.
>
>Certainly, although I think I understand your use of "local", I would like to see it presented as part of
>a full specification of CIF encoding so that I might determine more clearly how the concept will be received
>by current CIF users/developers.

Fair enough.  Here are the relevant excerpts of a revised full draft of the CIF2 Changes document.  I had intended to hold off on this, pending possible adoption of the underlying concept, but as long as you asked:

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TERMINOLOGY
Reference to character(s) means abstract characters assigned code points by Unicode.  [...]

Reference to CIF text means a sequence of characters collectively complying with the CIF syntax described in this specification.  CIF text is the unparsed logical content of a CIF, independent of any mechanism for representing that content concretely.

[...]

CHANGE X - REFINEMENT to CIF1
Persistent Form.
[...]
(3) CIF/local
CIF text is serialized according to this form by encoding it via the default text conventions for its environment, including not only character encoding scheme, but also the newline representation and possibly other details.  The specific meaning of "default text conventions" is system-dependent.  They are the conventions employed by the system's standard text editors when creating new files, the conventions the system's I/O libraries assume for 'formatted' or 'text' files when not explicitly instructed differently, etc..

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I am not emotionally tied to that exact wording nor even to all of the details, but I would be reasonably satisfied with them if adopted as-is.


Regards,

John
--
John C. Bollinger, Ph.D.
Department of Structural Biology
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital


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