Global section in CIF headers
Joe Krahn
krahn at niehs.nih.gov
Tue Sep 8 16:28:20 BST 2009
I have been thinking that it makes sense to allow a global_ block as
part of a CIF file. Globals have been excluded because they don't fit
very well into the data model, but it might be useful to allow them to
provide general format hints to the parser.
My idea is that a common low-level parser could be used for mmCIF, CIF,
and possibly other STAR variants. The global_ header would define
parsing rules for the file, including possible future revisions of the
same format, but not be considered part of the actual mmCIF data. For
example:
global_
_format mmCIF
_version 1.2
In a way, this just replaces the initial comment-embedded CIF
identifier, but I have always dislike the idea of a comment containing
data. This approach could be more detailed, depending on how much the
CIF/mmCIF format changes over time. Will it ever include STAR 2.0
bracketed lists? Will they ever directly include Unicode text?
Joe Krahn
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