Hi Tim,
I just downloaded GroEL entry 4KI8 in pdb format and cid format from
RSCB. The PDB format was 4.7Mb and the CIF format was 5.9Mb, doesn't seem such
a big difference to me ? Which example were you looking at ?
Andrew
On 5 Aug 2013, at 09:03, Tim Gruene <t...@shelx.uni-ac.gwdg.de> wrote:
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> Dear all,
>
> having read Gerard Kleywegt's latest announcement on the wwPDB Workshop
> (1st August) made me wonder whether it is planned to introduce mmCIF as
> working format to users in addition to using it at e.g. the PDB, because
> I think that would make life unnecessarily complicated.
>
> The example mmCIF file for GroEL is about 7.5 times bigger than its PDB
> file.
> I know that disk space is 'cheap' nowadays, but that does not make it fast.
>
> And personally I find mmCIF very awkward to work with, since it is not
> line-oriented. 'grep', 'awk', 'perl' etc. do not work well on XML-like
> files.
> Instead of using mmCIF, one could, e.g. introduce a free format PDB
> format, with space holders for non-assigned entities, and maybe a line
> continuation character.
>
> If mmCIF is not going to be the working format for MX (refinement)
> programs I would be happy for a reassurance, and otherwise I would
> appreciate some comments about the benefits of an XML file format over a
> line-oriented free format for the scientists that work with structural data.
> I my opinion, using XML (or mmCIF) for structural information is an
> attempt of programmers to make themselves more indespensable to
> scientists, rather than scientifically needed.
>
> Best,
> Tim
>
> - --
> - --
> Dr Tim Gruene
> Institut fuer anorganische Chemie
> Tammannstr. 4
> D-37077 Goettingen
>
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