CompuServe Messages

Hi Doug- Well, your cheats on the Dana group entries are OK with me. To be perfectly honest with you, I don't understand them (and me a crystallographer, chemist, and rockhound!), so I ignore them. Heck, your choices will probably break ground if we finally get our full database together. I might be adding more in the future. (Heh, heh…. I have a bit of time on my hands…) >I thought the appearance of PO4 at the start >of the formulae reflected your own prejudices. No sirree! I really didn't alter them from the books, I copied directly. I'm a scientist, so I followed science and did what was taught in the books. Moreover, I'm a chemist. You will never ever not no way not nohow catch a chemist starting a formula with PO4. We start formulas with the cations. (Na, K, Ca, Fe+2, whatever…) Just following their conventions. *I* would never personally write a formula that way. PO4 is a peon, the cation comes first! (as for the order of anions, and the *real* way you're supposed to write out all of the various silicate subgroups, IUPAC has a nomenclature. My personal feeling is that very few will search on formula, so whatever works….. as long as it conveys an accurate idea….. Silicates can be really complex, as you know….) Ummm, no idea about the sub/superscripts. And it has nothing to do with Lotus. See, I do it in Lotus (the most appropriate thing I can beg/borrow/steal). I export it to a flat ASCII file, and hand-edit it into CSV. That's why it takes me so long. I can't print out a Lotus file neatly, and compare to a CSV to see if I got it right. My desktop publishing is limited to PrintShop. (I don't normally do DTP. Guess I might change in the near future, huh? (G)) So what you get is an import of "X"," ","Fe4(+2)…" It does sound like some one of our protocols is blowing it though. My sub/superscripting abilities are limited to printing them (and rarely!) If I really had to, I'd put in code specific to my printer. (for example, (esc) )20.1Sh,20DJP,1,3,51f). (Example only! Needless to say, I don't practice this kind of barbarism unless I really need to!) (Welllll, OK, I, um, used to have to do masterpieces on a mainframe. But I don't practice this at home….) Your point about conventions is well taken. We have enough to worry about already without worrying about "TRG" vs "TRI", or "ORN" vs "ORG" vs…… Heck, I'm a spec person. We decide what's convenient and get on with life. We live with what we decided, or lobby for change. But as you point out, time and again, we gotta stick with conventions and standards. We have to nitpick our fellows (but in such a manner as to keep them coming back, an art if ever there was one!) to get it perfect. We write the specs. Quality is conformance to the specs. OK, I'm getting carried away. You'll know why if you read your e-mail…… I got nothing better to do at the moment but hang out in the forum…….. Conventions, specs, whatever. Of course, I'll be willing to polish up any of the data bases I've seen offered here so far. But we *have* to follow conventions. I dunno, I'm really up for a specs/conventions CO or seminar. Like, I got something *else* to do? Come to think of it, maybe I can start a SPEC/CONVENTION course? (OK, being wishful thinking…..) See ya later, it's late as usual…..JD