Chemical Informatics Letters

This is a substantial book with nearly six hundred pages. This is necessary, because the book lists all the possible dictionary entries in the CIF format, in order to define all of the terms precisely and to address all of the detail required to rigorously cover all of the issues involved in crystallography. Some of the detail could perhaps have been abbreviated. For example, a detailed account of the CIF data dictionaries takes up about half the book, and this lists separately all the elements of the matrices and vectors in the data dictionaries, and sometimes these differ only in the indices. However, where this book errs, it is on the side of excessive detail and never risks losing precision by saving space. This bias is essential for a definitive reference work.

The book starts with a historical account of the development of CIF files, and then gives an account of the concepts and specifications for CIF files and related formats. Data definition and classification forms a major section, followed by a detailed description of the CIF data dictionaries. The final part of the book describes applications of CIFs, including some Fortran and ANSI C programs, which are also included on the accompanying CD-ROM. This final section may become dated quite soon, but the formal definitions, which make up most of the book, should be important for years to come.

This book is an essential reference for crystallographers, and for everyone who needs to check precisely what is recorded in a crystallographic information file. Future scientists will depend on these definitions, and so the time and effort devoted to the production of this book has been used well. Readers seeking a quick introduction to the CIF format may do better to consult the original paper (Acta Cryst. 1991, A47, 655-685), which outlines the structures of the files. However, everyone who needs a complete and authoritative description of the format, needs this book.