Unfortunately, it cannot be said that the present state of knowledge in this field is satisfactory. There are a lot of very different and often contradictory opinions with respect to the interpretation of the diffraction pattern in category of real structure. The activities of individual scientists dealing with these problems are rather alone standing and the communication of different schools is not very intensive. One must go back to early sixties in order to find an attempt at a comprehensive book. The latest work which tried to treat the problem of XRD analysis of real structure of polycrystalline materials in a global and unified way appeared 35 years ago (H.S. Peiser, H.P. Rooksby, A.J.C. Wilson : ``X-Ray Diffraction of Polycrystalline Materials:).
During the preparation of the conference it was succeeded to collect about 30 best specialists in XRD real structure analysis from all over the world. These people decided to write a book extending to about 650 pages - the codex documenting the present state of art in this field and to meet in the specialized conference with the aim to compare their views and theories and to get near to the truth.
The conference has another important purpose - to present the first results of the international Round Robin test of the JCPDS - International Centre for Diffraction Data standard. The standard with defined real structure was prepared by Prof. R.L. Snyder .
Such a rich, interesting and stimulating programme should bring a great benefit to all people who will come in August to Liptovský Mikulás - both the listeners and participants having their own contributions.