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Re: Accent escape sequences

David Brown wrote:
> I would just like to point out that the escape sequencies in use in the
> Acta Cryst. editorial office are not part of the CIF conventions.  They
> have never been adopted by COMCIFS, though I am sure that COMCIFS would
> be willing to consider any proposals people might like to make.  The
> problem is that there are many different types of text field and one set
> of conventions may not be suitable for all of them.
> 
> David
So, are they using significantly more than those listed here:
http://journals.iucr.org/iucr-top/cif/spec/version1.1/cifsemantics.html

The CIF core defines a set of sequences that are applicable "If
permitted by the relevant dictionary and if no other indication is
present". I think this is already somewhat of a problem, because CIF
files should be parseable without a dictionary.

Maybe there should be a standard sequence defined that indicates that
the 'standard' markup conventions are in use (i.e. begin with "\\cif "
to indicate 'cif' markup). Other encoding schemes can then be used
without the possibility of misinterpretation if read without a dictionary.

Alternatively, the CIF encoding could just be a named encoding
convention. Then, the default encoding in the absence of a dictionary is
none. The dictionary can then choose to define a global default encoding.

In any case, the standard CIF encoding should be defined more precisely.

Joe Krahn

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