XTAL system of crystallographic programs: programmer's manual

This document establishes the basis for collaborative writing of transportable computer programs for x-ray crystallography. The concepts and general-purpose utility subroutines described here can be readily adapted to other scientific calculations. The complete system of crystallographic programs and subroutines is called XTAL and replaces the XRAY (6,7,8) system of programs. The coding language for the XTAL system is RATMAC (5). The XTAL system of programs contains routines for controlling execution of application programs. In this sense it forms a suboperating system that presents the same computational environment to the user and programmer irrespective of the operating system in use at a particular installation. These control routines replace all FORTRAN I/O code, supply character reading and writing, supply binary file reading and writing, serve as a support library for applications programs, and provide for interprogram communication