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Justin,

Some users might have concerns that they "get the same results" with the 
new file format, so that having the old headers in the files would make 
it easier to check on that. Certainly we would be interested to have 
access to writing information to the new headers with current cameras 
and the linux device server. Currently things can be encoded into the 
"file_comments" and "dataset_comments", and are then decoded again later 
(if not by mosflm).

Retaining the original header will be useful for developers who are 
further downstream, and work in other fields than mosflm.

It would also be useful if there is a way to arrange things so that 
simple minded file readers find the x-ray image first, rather than 
getting confused by finding the header instead. Just in case some people 
start at the top of file and move down looking for the first mime header.

Best wishes,

Jon



harry powell wrote:
> Hi Justin
> 
> If you want to keep the Mar header items, why not just keep on  
> writing Mar format images (which are well-supported by all the major  
> integration programs)?
> 
> As a developer, I think I would prefer you to write all the Mar  
> header items as CIF header items, if you want to write CBFs. If the  
> imgCIF items don't exist, tell the community and I'm sure they could  
> be accommodated.
> 
> Mosflm will _only_ read the imgCIF header items and ignore any  
> comments or non-image MIME components (why on earth would I spend  
> time writing code to read both kinds of header item from an image  
> file when the imgCIF headers are supposed to be definitive?), and my  
> understanding is that XDS doesn't read the CBF or Mar header items in  
> any case. I don't know about d*Trek or HKL...
> 
> On 24 Sep 2007, at 20:51, Justin Anderson wrote:
> 
>> Hi Harry, thanks for the reply.
>>
>> We were wanting to dump in our binary header so that we could read it
>> directly in to the marccd program and be able to recover the entire
>> original header that way (regardless of which of our header items are
>> mapped to CIF header fields).
>>
>> What were your concerns with having it in the file?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Justin
>>
>>
>> On 09/24/2007 02:38 PM, harry powell wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> I don't understand why you'd want to add the binary header, to be
>>> honest. I can see why you might want to have the contents of the
>>> header as an ASCII comment section - but I think this should just be
>>> a check while developing the file format.
>>>
>>> Could you elaborate why you'd want it there?
>>>
>>>> Hello everyone,
>>>>
>>>> We here would, in fact, like to add our binary header to the CBF  
>>>> file.
>>>> Should that just go into an additional binary section, with MIME
>>>> header
>>>> and all of that?  If so, is there any recommendation as to how we  
>>>> can
>>>> refer to it in the CIF headers so that I can distinguish between the
>>>> binary image data and our binary header data?  My inclination is to
>>>> add
>>>> the ".header_convention" column to my "_array_data" loop and fill
>>>> it in
>>>> with "RAY_1.0" or something like that for the our binary header and
>>>> with
>>>>   an empty value "" for the image data.
>>>>
>>>> e.g. :
>>>>
>>>> loop_
>>>> _array_data.array_id
>>>> _array_data.binary_id
>>>> _array_data.header_convention
>>>> _array_data.data
>>>>   ARRAY1 1 RAY_1.0
>>>> ;
>>>> --CIF-BINARY-FORMAT-SECTION--
>>>> <<MIME header for Rayonix binary header dump>>
>>>> <<Rayonix binary header dump>>
>>>> --CIF-BINARY-FORMAT-SECTION----
>>>> ;
>>>>   ARRAY2 2
>>>> ;
>>>> --CIF-BINARY-FORMAT-SECTION--
>>>> <<MIME header for image binary data>>
>>>> <<Image binary data>>
>>>> --CIF-BINARY-FORMAT-SECTION----
>>>> ;
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Justin Anderson                    Rayonix, LLC (Formerly Mar USA)
>>>> Software Engineer                  justin at rayonix.com
>>>> 1880 Oak Ave. Ste. 120             Evanston, IL, USA 60201
>>>> 877.627.9729                       847.869.1548
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> imgcif-l mailing list
>>>> imgcif-l at iucr.org
>>>> http://scripts.iucr.org/mailman/listinfo/imgcif-l
>>> Harry
>> _______________________________________________
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>> imgcif-l at iucr.org
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> 
> Harry