Following is the Homepage for the Structure Determination by Powder Diffractometry (SDPD) mailing list. This mailing list on the internet is free (no cost) and is open to all. It was created especially for people who are either involved or curious about methods for crystal structure determination from powder diffraction data. 

Originally, discussions on this topic were included in the Rietveld Mailing List (see archives). Those previous discussions led to the SDPD Round Robin (May-June 1998) about which all details are available on the Web. But, if all SDPD experts use the Rietveld method in the ultimate structure refinement stage, not all Rietveld method users are interested in the huge list of SDPD sub-topics. So that a web-based SDPD forum was first open which had a limited success probably because there was no email distribution : subscribers had to go to the web pages and see if there was a new discussion. With this new SDPD Mailing List, subscribers will receive the latest news about their favourite occupation in their mailbox.

Hunting peak positions
Search-match and databases (not identifying compounds)
Indexing
    Treor
    Ito
    Dicvol
Structure factors extraction
    Pawley method
    Le Bail method
    unconstrained cell methods
Structure determination
   Patterson
   Direct methods
   Maximum entropy
   Molecule location methods
       Simulated annealing, Monte Carlo
       Genetic algorithm
       Packing considerations
(.... a list of software may be found in the SDPD database)

This mailing list will hopefully be the best place for announcing new software (public domain as well as commercial) concerning the above topics and for discussing old software users problems and suggesting fixes (e.g., why does my XXX software, while performing well with the examples described in the manual, fails regularly with my experimental cases ?:-). 

Full references for articles dealing with either reviews or experimental cases, are expected to come here. Our rather limited community (>350 structures determined by >700 co-authors) do not publish more than 100 papers a year on SDPD, and the number of experimental cases solved is almost stabilized at ~50 articles/year (see the SDPD database). 

Criticism is expected to occur, and the SDPD mailing list will not be moderated. After all, people need to find here not only a list of software, but explicitly which one presents the largest chances to really help in solving their particular problem. Criticism as well as reporting bugs/glitches/kludges/"features" of various software and their possible work-arounds or solutions are suggested to be made in a "genteel" way, which was not always the case in the past. We recommend to never consider any apparent lack of politeness like a real one, but like unfamiliarism with english language. 

If you want to be one of the participants, you must have added yourself to the mailing list. There are three ways to join the group :

1- Add yourself by entering your e-mail address into the membership form found with the SDPD group's messages on the yahoogroups.com site. 

2- Send an e-mail to [email protected]

3- Add yourself by entering your e-mail address below, then clicking on the SDPD logo :

Subscribe to the SDPD Mailing List

Note : due to the commercial nature of yahoogroups.com, some advertisements will be associated to e-mails. If sufficient interest is shown, the option of deleting those advertisements will be activated (involving a very small cost). Please ignore those banners till this occurs.

Simply go to the SDPD Web pages and unsubscribe, or send an email to [email protected] or ultimately, send an email to the mailing list owners [email protected] asking them to do it for you.

If you have other questions, visit:  http://help.yahoo.com/help/groups/

To "Reply" Only to the Author 

If you want to discuss a topic with only the author of the article, email a separate message. Be careful not to do a reply as your personal message will be sent to all participants of the SDPD list. 

However, please consider sending your response to the entire mailing list as fellow subscribers appreciate these contributions.

To "Follow-on" Your Comments to Everyone in the Mailing List 

You may wish your reply on a particular topic to be read by everyone else in the mailing list as part of an on-going discussion (the preferred option for a mailing list). Just reply to the message which will then go to the SDPD mailing list at [email protected]. 

This keeps the titles of the discussion consistent and please also consider including the relevant parts of the previous message you are discussing so that the context of your comments can be understood as a free-standing article.

Once you subscribe yourself to the list, please consider sending out a message introducing yourself.

Do not send HTML e-mails because they are sometimes not well translated.