Further developments in electronic delivery are planned. Scientific importance would assign top priority to Acta Crystallographica Section D , but there are technical and financial counter-arguments. Protein crystallography depends on high-quality diagrams, for which the low information density of raster graphics is inefficient. For many applications, raster graphics' generality is offset by difficulty in synthesizing information - at which current computing technology competes unfavourably with more versatile human observers. High loads imposed by inefficient graphics protocols are tolerable on lightly used networks served by powerful hardware, but performance deteriorates rapidly as network loadings increase.
Most information seeking on networks is interactive.
An acceptable interactive service within a single land mass spanned by a strong network is readily provided, but one cannot guarantee satisfactory response that depends on inter-continental communication. Ideally, the IUCr should provide a comparable service to all of its members, but the service at many locations is limited by communications. Lack of information security on networks is a further but less acute problem. Services that the IUCr could provide electronically include some ancillaries to journals. It is appropriate to provide these for Acta Crystallographica Section C initially, extending this to other journals if the Acta Crystallographica Section C trial proves successful.