[Wikipedia-l] SMILES

[Neil Harris]

Magnus Manske wrote:

> Whatever extension syntax we decide on, I hereby officially ask for 
> the support of SMILES. SMILES are a simple (wiki-way!) syntax for 
> describing molecular structures. For a tutorial and examples, see
>
>    http://www.daylight.com/dayhtml/smiles/smiles-intro.html
>
> Automatic rendering should
> * ease the addition of molecular structures to articles
> * make uploaded structures obsolete (save space/avoid copyright 
> issues/reduce cluttering of image namespace)
> * unified look'n'feel
>
> There appears to be a toolkit at
>    http://www.daylight.com/products/smiles_kit.html
> but I didn't look into it yet. There is also a Java app that can 
> render SMILES into PNG, somwhere...
>
> Magnus
>
>
>

I agree, SMILES looks excellent as a way of representing chemical 
diagrams as remarkably short and editable strings.

So, we would have something like...

---- QUOTE ----

Ethanol's [[chemical formula]] is 
[[Carbon|C]]<sub>2</sub>[[Hydrogen|H]]<sub>5</sub>[[hydroxyl|OH]]  and 
its molecular structure is

:<smiles>CCO</smiles>

---- UNQUOTE ----

The Java app appears to be http://www.molinspiration.com/docu/mitools.html

Both appear to be closed-source software. Is there an open/free 
implementation of a SMILES renderer anywhere?

Perhaps this would make a good term project for a Computer Science student?

Can any of the existing TeX packages be used / adapted for this?


-- Neil