Re: Where to locate CSTR 122, CHEM -- A Program for Typesetting Chemical Diagrams?

[Norwid Behrnd]

Dear Oliver

Given the age of the original publication, there is a "young copy" recently
compiled in the public shelves of Simon Fraser University (Burnaby/British
Columbia)

https://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/pups/Documentation/TechReports/Bell_Labs/CSTRs/122.pdf
https://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/pups/Documentation/TechReports/Bell_Labs/CSTRs/122.ps

Should these links move/close, an alternative to the above are

http://troff.xyz/doc/preproc/chem/1992_chem.pdf
http://troff.xyz/doc/preproc/chem/1992_chem.ps

However ...

- while not necessary wrong in the depiction of molecular structures (there
  are guidelines by IUPAC, e.g. the ones by Brecher[1]), they are somewhat
  "different" to what one is used to in comparison to the journals
- speaking of such, modern GUI based editors (including many of the freely
  available ones) already include the journal' style templates -- a
  structure, a reaction is converted into their preference / corporate
  identity by one/a few mouse clicks.  They offer to create templates to
  (perceived/real) needs so you can spot "lineage" or "inheritance" from
  academic groups, e.g. Phil Baran/Scripps, too.  Vertical/horizontal
  alignment, group/ungroup of molecules, move of straight and curved arrows
  arguably is faster with quick visual check in a GUI, too
- The "usual suspects" in the game (ChemDraw, ChemDoodle, etc) provide an
  export _of the illustration_ to .ps/.svg in addition to preserving
  some/much/all of the _chemistry-related_ information in a separate file
  format (e.g., .cdxml, .sdf; SMILES) other programs can continue to work
  with.[2]  This facilitates _very much_ the exchange with colleagues.
- What could be nice -- maybe already possible with groff and I didn't figure
  this out yet -- were an automatic label _in_ the figures, their update in
  figures and text.  In (especially organic) chemistry, reports tend to number
  the compounds instead of repeating the names again and again. One then states
  reactions in the text like "... the oxidation of alcohol (**13**) with TEMPO
  provided aldehyde (**14**) ..." while there is an illustration to depict the
  reaction.  See the examples of LaTeX package `chemescheme`'s documentation
  (now part of `chemstyle`[3], pp 6 of attached pdf).

Best regards,

Norwid

[1] Brecher, 2008PAC277 https://doi.org/10.1351/pac200880020277
[2] https://www.gunda.hu/dprogs/
[3] https://www.ctan.org/pkg/chemstyle

chemstyle.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document