- Data structures representing CIFs and their components
- Functions for building, manipulating, and examining in-memory CIF data
- Functions for reading and writing CIF files
- Data structures representing CIF dictionaries and their components
- Functions implementing the CIF dictionary merging protocol
- Functions or options for validating CIF
Does anyone want to omit any of the feature groups above, or characterize them differently? In particular, does this API need to address validation? If yes, then does the initial version of the API need to do so, or could that work be deferred to a later version of the API or to a companion API?