CCP4 software library: Design Document

Author: Martyn Winn
Revision: 0.2 Date: 03/10/2002

Form of library

  1. Support functions must be available to all partial makes (CMTZ etc.). Possibly some duplication should be allowed to support partial makes.

Naming conventions

Coding conventions

Error handling and debugging

Contract - Error handling based upon standard C libraries. Information to be made available to calling routines via defined return status and error code. Library to contain error code with accessor functions. The response is left to the calling routines, except in FORTRAN wrappers).

ccp4_errno.h defines error state ccp4_errno, so are separate from system errno. This takes the form:


   | 12 bits (system) | 4 bits (level) | 16 bits (code) ||

and is set in ccp4_signal(). ccp4_errno is externally visible.

Error message strings are set statically allocated in library_err.c, and made accessible by ccp4_strerror (cf strerror) and ccp4_error (cf perror).

ccp4_errno is set by ccp4_signal(int error_code, char msg, void (*callback)() ) which allows callback (extend to pass data and return void *?).

Non-integrated routines ccperror().

Support for scripting

Class and struct members must be made available to scripting languages, and this is done in a variety of ways:
  1. Generation of shadow classes, as in python interface to MMDB.
  2. Use of SWIG-generated accessor functions for structs (not tried yet).
  3. Explicit accessor functions. cmtzlib.c has a number of these (e.g. MtzColType). When implemented at the C level, these are accessible to all applications. However, it may be that they are only useful for Tcl, in which case they could be implemented as SWIG inline functions.

CMTZ

Here is an incomplete diagram of MTZ header structure:

Comparisons with Fortran API of CCP4 4.2

The aim is to continue to support the legacy Fortran API. However, there are some subtle differences:

CMAP

Minimum Contract - C style io access to mapfile. Read data into program specified arrays. Replication of FORTRAN API.

Mapfile described by C-structure (currently flat), representing header plus additional information for parsing. This is accessible by accessor functions.

Logical breakdown of file into header, symops, sections, rows, and data. Read, Write and Seek access to be given to symops, etc ...

CSYM

  1. Extensive spacegroup information is held in a flat file syminfo.lib. This file is generated from cctbx with the addition of CCP4 spacegroup numbers and real space ASUs where appropriate. The file holds data for non-standard settings.
  2. Spacegroups are identified by standard number, CCP4 number, or list of operations, and data for that spacegroup read into memory.
  3. Some data is calculated on the fly, e.g. centric and epsilon zones.
  4. csymlib_f contains static arrays to link subroutine calls to structures in memory.

Unit cell

  1. Contains manipulations of cell parameters and orthogonal to fractional transformations. Taken mainly from old rwbrook.

CCP4 style

  1. Contains functions to give CCP4-style command line interface, CCP4 banner, etc.
  2. Aim to reproduce traditional CCP4 look-and-feel.

System-dependent functions.

IO routines

Minimum Contract - extend and rationalise current io library to give additional file information.

Wraps buffered (FILE) and unbuffered (fp) access. All access allowed as items or raw bytes. Maintains information on status of file, including length, location and error status. Adds byte swapping on write to allow appending to a non-native file. File mode is set by fopen() style character mode.

Ability to get/put/unget (not implemented).

Wrapping of FILE based buffer control (not implemented).