Standardization -portability of crystallographic data

Abstract The title of this lecture refers to portability and standardization. Portability - the ability to transfer information from one location to another - is of course a desirable facility Standardization - the establishment of agreed terms for defining specific information - is the way to achieve this. There are three types of portability we may consider, and we shall see how the various standards required to enable each type of portability can come together to provide a high-level specification for a data structure that allows a highly portable form of data transfer in our science of crystallography.