Timetable for DDLm dictionary approval

[James Hester]

Dear COMCIFS,

As per the resolution at the Montreal COMCIFS meeting, the canonical
version of dictionaries that had been written in DDL1, and of any new
dictionaries, will be DDLm. The foundation stone of the framework is the
core CIF dictionary, a DDLm version of which is currently under review in
the core CIF DMG before being presented to COMCIFS for approval. Meanwhile,
the magnetic structures commission has produced a magnetic dictionary (in
DDLm) which is waiting on core CIF approval before being presented to
COMCIFS.  It is hoped that this dictionary, which has the support of the
authors of popular magnetic structure software suites, will be formally
introduced to the magnetism community at a magnetism workshop in December.
As this is a rare opportunity for the magnetism community to effectively
promote magCIF, it is important that COMCIFS expedite its consideration of
both core CIF and magCIF.

I therefore propose that our usual leisurely 6 week approval period is
reduced to three weeks for the remainder of this calendar year, in view
both of the need for timely consideration and the end of the summer
holidays in the northern hemisphere. Note that three weeks is simply the
period after which the absence of comment following significant changes is
taken to be approval, and does not limit discussions started in that
period.  Affirmative agreement to this proposal is requested as soon as
possible from the COMCIFS voting members (J Westbrook, H Bernstein, J
Bollinger, B McMahon).

Assuming that we work within a 3-week timetable, and that no significant
issues are identified, our approval timetable looks like the following:

19th Sept: core CIF presented to COMCIFS
10th Oct: core CIF approved by COMCIFS, magCIF presented to COMCIFS
31st Oct: magCIF approved.

This leaves one month of leeway in case any significant problems are
identified.

Those of you who wish to get a head start on the two dictionaries mentioned
above may view advanced draft versions at the following links:

core CIF:
https://github.com/COMCIFS/cif_core/blob/cif2-conversion/cif_core.dic
magCIF: https://github.com/COMCIFS/magnetic_dic/blob/master/magCIF.dic

James.
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