COMCIFS response to DDDWG recommendations

[jamesrhester]

Dear DDDWG members,

COMCIFS welcomes the DDDWG recommendations. Given that COMCIFS has several decades' experience in dealing with metadata, it can offer the following services to IUCr bodies as they move to address the DDDWG recommendations:
* advice on what is already available within CIF in a given problem space (e.g. imgCIF for images)
* advice on development of new metadata items
* construction of formal dictionaries
* consultation on other aspects of creating metadata frameworks

COMCIFS is forming a subcommittee to liaise with the DDDWG and IUCr commissions, and will produce some documentation outlining the process of creating CIF-based metadata and the advantages/disadvantages of using CIF.

A suggested first step would be for each of the Commissions and communities to produce a plain-text metadata dictionary (as the XAFS Commission has done at http://www.iucr.org/__data/assets/pdf_f ... bution.pdf, see also http://www.iucr.org/resources/commissio ... dictionary).

James Hester, COMCIFS chair.