Global section in CIF headers

[Brian H. Toby]

A global section could also be used to describe the relationships  
between data blocks in a single CIF. To date, (outside of pdCIF) the  
CIF model has assumed that each block is fully defined internally and  
thus can be used independently. This defeats the point of having  
multi-block file structures.

Brian

On Sep 8, 2009, at 10:28 AM, Joe Krahn wrote:

> 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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