Magnus Manske wrote:

I just found another GPL tool, which can convert SMILES (among other things) into other formats: http://openbabel.sourceforge.net/ Is any of the *output* formats of that software convertable into PNG through other GPL software?

Magnus

Try this:

http://xdrawchem.sourceforge.net/

which can read MDL and emit PNGs, is GPL-licenced, and cross-platform. It also says "Can also read and write any format supported by the current release of OpenBabel." and since this includes SMILES, this may mean this is a single -component solution (or just that it calls OpenBabel externally to do the work).

I've also found this interesting set of lecture notes for background on chemical informatics:

http://www.indiana.edu/~cheminfo/C371/c371barnard.ppt

(which opens just fine in OpenOffice.org)

-- Neil