So, I am thinking about putting up a survey somewhere to get a measure of the user-communities interests, because RCSB and wwPDB seem uninterested in doing so. Maybe a group result would be more useful in influencing the standards. I am hoping that the wwPDB can become a better place for format standards instead of RCSB which keeps busy handling new data.
In addition to questions about the PDB standard, it is probably important to consider mmCIF. One thing I don't like about it is that columns can be randomized (i.e. X, Y, and Z can be in any column), but the mmCIF standards people have no interest in defining a more strict standard that would require files to be as human readable as RCSB's mmCIF files. Does this sound useful, or have most people given up on having any influence on standards? Or, should the structural biology software developers get together and just make our own OpenPDB format? Joe Krahn
