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Re: Revised statement of policy on CIF

	I think Herbert's suggestion that we allow a program to claim to
read a 'restricted subset of CIF' is very dangerous.  In fact, in the
example he gives, it would be impossible to say what the subset of CIFs
were, since the required order is not to be found in any CIF manual.  It
would therefore largely be a matter of luck whether a particular CIF could
be read or not.  The program Herbert describes is definitely
non-compliant and should not be advertised as if it might work with some
CIFs.  Either it reads ANY legal CIF or it doesn't.  Ordering the items in
a CIF is a direct violation of the rules.

	If Herbert wants to write such a program for some special purpose,
he is, of course, welcome to do so, but he should not claim that it reads
CIFs.

				David


*****************************************************
Dr.I.David Brown,  Professor Emeritus
Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research, 
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tel: 1-(905)-525-9140 ext 24710
Fax: 1-(905)-521-2773
idbrown@mcmaster.ca
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