Section 5.3.3.1.6. The error notification pane and logging area

The lower left-hand pane of Fig. 5.3.3.1 illustrates typical error notices generated by the parser when the validation process is invoked. At present, the classification of the severity of errors is guided by the editorial requirements of databases and journals, and does not necessarily match the formal errors dictated by the CIF specification. It is likely that this will change in future releases as validation is driven increasingly by the dictionaries rather than by hard-coded subroutines.

A convenient feature is that double-clicking on the line number in the error report relocates the cursor to that line in the editing pane. At present, error messages are listed by line only – they are not grouped by data block.

The user has a small number of options to control error notification. The choice of the maximum number of consecutive error lines to permit before error checking is abandoned is a useful way, especially for novices, to reduce the amount of output generated by severe syntax errors and to focus on repairing individual errors. The user may also specify a file that contains a set of CIF data names which are considered mandatory components of a particular file. Absence of any of these items from the current data block is flagged as an error. The program log in the lower right-hand part of the program window records the history of the user's interactions with the file during the current editing session.

Information is written to the status bar (the lower margin of the window) to indicate the location by line and column number of the editing cursor.