Sorry for delay as back from 3 days in London; and X number of Emails that still need replying to. (Cc'd to Brian Toby as head of PowderCIF given he will most likely want to comment? As while native data would be a good quality check - something like this of would need standard file formats to be managable and of maximum usefulness - and that means CIF, and powder programs THAT CAN ROUTINELY import/write CIF structures and data(?)) ---- A adhoc response from me is that any data people wanted to make available (in native formats and hopefully a brief description and contact addresses of origin) can have a happy home NOW (if somewhat experimental and subject to possible change) on the CCP14 site in an area of its own: http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/ccp/ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/xtal-data/ Either Emailing data in or depositing via anonymous FTP: machine: www.ccp14.ac.uk user: ftp password: an E-mail address (then E-mailing me that you have deposited the data withh description files) The various round robin data would be an obvious candidate to put there if this is considered kosher by the Round Robin organisers. ---- On a related issue that would have quite a bearing on this: I have been told verbally that both Armel and myself are on the new IUCr Crystallographic Computing Commission (with David Watkin of Oxford University (author of the Crystals Single Crystal Software) as Chair but as I have not received anything on letter-head, the following are just personal comments. At the Computing Commission meeting in Glasgow, David Watkin considered it very important to create a publically accessible collection of both commissioned and donated datasets relevant to crystallography, (single crystal, powder, etc) so software developers have the best chance of creating crystallographic software that is as robust as possible. (this would also benefit for users who wished to use the data) Obviously this would be a long term and continuous effort. ---- Though as stated above, unless a common file format can be included (such as CIF), this type of area could easily become unmanagable. Many dataformats are not well described and have varients. Thus also having CIF (standard file format) equivalent along side the native files would have to be a part of this so people can have confidence in the form of the data. Comments? Lachlan. -- Lachlan M. D. Cranswick Collaborative Computational Project No 14 (CCP14) for Single Crystal and Powder Diffraction Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington, WA4 4AD U.K Tel: +44-1925-603703 Fax: +44-1925-603124 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ext: 3703 Room C14 http://www.ccp14.ac.uk
