Crystallography Online: the website of the International Union of Crystallography

Brian,

I don't understand the MIME arguments that well, due to not having
worked with publication oriented CIF at all; I am in macromolecular
crystallography.

In general, how is MIME with a TeX component any different from the
current %T hack, except that it also included a simple ASCII
approximation? It sounds like you are considering how to expand the
usage beyond the current %T usage.

I think that the only way to get good publication quality output is to
generate a result that is based on vector-graphics. Maybe SVG format
will work for the basic page layout, as well as for things like
equations. SVG is XML based, and can deal with things like embedded
objects and hyperlinks. There are even existing mechanisms for including
bitmap images in the text stream.

Anyhow, how does this all relate to MIME in CIF as good or bad? If there
is a TeX equation within a CIF file, this can be used directly for
publication purposes only if there is a parent document somewhere
defining the layout in which to render that equation. Should this be in
the CIF file as well? If so, MIME would allow the parent document to
exist both as plain text and SVG/HTML/whatever.

Joe