Main Page

This CCP4 user community wiki ("CCP4 wiki" in short) is meant to be a collection of crystallographic knowledge as discussed on the CCP4 mailing list (CCP4BB), and elsewhere. It may contain information about anything relevant to protein crystallographers, whether methods-related ("what is the best program for purpose X?"), problem-oriented ("my crystals melt if I look at them"), or concerning hardware ("what is your opinion on robot X / computer Y?").

The topics (side bar) include articles about protein expression and purification, crystal growth, handling and data collection, crystallographic theory and practice, and crystal structure related bioinformatics and computer-related issues. There are also announcements for open positions, courses and conferences and a FAQ.

Many interesting questions are currently being answered on CCP4BB, but the answers are not easily accessible for others after some time. The intention is that the wiki reflect the breadth of topics on CCP4BB, which will make it a useful resource e.g. for "frequently asked questions", offloading some of the question/answer traffic on CCP4BB to a more permanent mode of storage. A wiki has the additional advantage that mathematical formulas and images may be presented nicely.

What is CCP4?

CCP4 is a crystallographic program system, and can be downloaded from [1]. It is free for academic use; the license is at [2]. Documentation is in the CCP4 developers' wiki and at [3], and a mailing list (CCP4BB) is at [4] that can also be viewed here or here.

How to use this wiki

• you may read the existing articles with a web browser (does not require an account).
• you are invited to contribute to CCP4 wiki, by creating new articles, and by adding information to, or correcting existing articles. Before you do this for the first time, you need to create an account.

Due to the amount of spam created, we had to stop self-service account creation - send us a personal email (karsten. schaefer at uni-konstanz.de, or kay.diederichs at uni-konstanz.de) and we'll open account creation for you.

This wiki is under the same Copyright (termed "GNU Free Documentation License") as Wikipedia, so any information in it may be transferred to other wikis subject to the Copyright.

Getting started

Consult the User's Guide for information on using the wiki software, and see Creating an article.

Transparent inter-wiki linking is now very easy due to an extension called "SpecialInterwiki". These links appear like internal links (see the next sentences!), and can point to subsections of an article, or to figures (untested!). This also means that if a wiki changes its DNS name, only a single inter-wiki link has to be updated. Currently, the CCP4 developers' wiki, the XDSwiki and (as of May 02, 2008) the IUCr Online Dictionary of Crystallography are in the Inter-Wiki table.

Wiki contents

• Topics - an attempt to list possible items hierarchically
• All pages - list of all pages of this wiki
• Courses and Conferences
• Positions
• articles can also be found using the search box in the left column