[sdpd] SDPDD book first critical review

[Armel Le Bail <alb...@cristal.org>]

Hello,

Finally, I received the 13th IUCr Monograph on Crystallography
entitled "Structure Determination from Powder Diffraction Data"
Edited by W.I.F. David et al., Oxford Science Publication
http://www.oup-usa.org/isbn/0198500912.html

My first impressions in the critical review below :

- I have not read completely the book yet, however, I expected
to see in the preface or introduction that it comes from an
International workshop organized in 1995 :
http://www.cristal.org/iniref/lbm-story/sdpd95-3.jpg
http://www.cristal.org/iniref/lbm-story/sdpd95-1.jpg
http://www.cristal.org/iniref/lbm-story/sdpd95-2.jpg

I can understand that defining a date for impression was not
easy since most of the authors were engaged in continuous
developments about SDPD. And fortunately, chapters were
updated and show many references much more recent than 1995.

- A bit surprised to read in the preface :
"Readers will find that while every effort has been made to ensure
that the chapters present a consistent and coherent approach to
structure detemination, no attempt has been made to gloss over
differences of opinion, as expressed by individual authors, regarding
the benefits or limitations of particular methods. This is particularly
apparent in the case of the key step of intensity extraction, where
the relative merits of the Pawley and Le Bail methods are raised
in several chapters. Such differences are, however, minor and should
not overly concern the reader. Indeed, probably the most dignificant
legacy of the past decade lies in the diversity of methods that have
been developed."

Pawley and Le Bail, both of them alive (almost), were confiscated any
possibility to say a word about their method ("key step") in that book.
I would like to take the opportunity to say here that I love both methods
since both have done good job in the sense that many SDPDs were
successful by using |F|s extracted by using them. A small note could
be published about that in the August 2002 special issue of the
Z. Kristallogr. journal, for its 125th birthday.

- About "the diversity of methods that have been developped", I agree
but I find the list of 27 computer programs pages 328-329 a bit short.
Much more complete lists are available at the CCP14 and SDPD-Database
web sites :
  http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/  and http://www.cristal.org/iniref.html

Anyway, that book is to be recommended to every scientist engaged in
the SDPD stream, of course.

Armel

PS - The SDPD-Database was set up in 1995 on the Web. I must say that it
was created exactly because I found a bit incomplete the list of authors
invited at the SDPD 1995 International Workshop, and also invited to
contribute to the 13th IUCr Monograph on Crystallography.  I guess that the
SDPD-Database gives for free more up to date and exhaustive lists of 
references
about SDPD than the SDPDD book.

PS -2 The "Rietveld Method" book published in 1993 was also the
conclusion of a workshop in 1989 at Petten, The Netherlands.
I prefer to rely on Internet than on books for obtaining fresh news...
Not even a link to the SDPD-Database into the SDPDD book. But
the SDPD-Database will have a link to the book ;-).


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