grated into any word-processing package that runs on the Macintosh, such as Microsoft Word. All Macintosh fonts on the user's system are available for inclusion as atom labels and captions in the documents. ChemPanion and Chemlntosh ChemPanion and Chemlntosh are Apple Macintosh desk accessory programs that provide a graphic interface for drawing chemical structures and schemes. (A desk accessory can be started and run at the same time as a Macintosh applications program, such as a word processor.) Saturated and unsaturated rings with three to eight atoms are created by using icons for the regular polygons. There are also icons for benzene, the chair and boat conformations of cyclohexane, and unsymmetrical cyclopentane rings. The programs can create a variety of bonds, including wedged, bold, hashed wedge, hashed, wavy dashed, single and multiple, as well as schematic arrows for reaction, equilibrium, resonance, and electron transfer. Both ChemPanion and Chemlntosh can customize bond widths, lengths, or angles, and they also have an UNDO function to allow the user to recover from mistakes. Chemlntosh, which provides the same features as ChemPanion, also can create and edit blocks of text and import graphics created by other programs (e.g., MacDraw, MacDraft, or SuperPaint, all by the Macintosh clipboard utility). Chemlntosh also allows the user to lay out and scale the single-page working document and then print it, as well as save or open other working documents. ChemText The most notable aspect of this comprehensive program is its graphics capabilities, which can be readily integrated with text. The text is prepared using the editor, which includes standard word-processing features such as block commands, search and replace, word-wrap, and other interactive, onscreen editing capabilities that wordprocessing users have come to expect. The program does not generate tables of contents or indexes, however. Greek and math characters are easily accessed through menus to alternate keyboards and can be adjusted for final placement graphically using the mouse. Text typed in one character set can be changed globally to another character set or font style through a block command. The strengths of this program are its two graphics programs: the Sketchpad and the Molecule Editor. Both are fast and generate attractive graphics on screen and in the Postscript laser printer output. Graphics can be created during an edit session by moving into one
of the graphics programs and then can be brought directly into the text document and displayed. Molecular Design has cleverly kept a file format for its graphics that is compatible with its other PC-based and mainframe products, so that molecular structures generated in ChemText can be exported to ChemBase and ChemLab and vice versa. ChiWriter ChiWriter is a WYSIWYG word processor that works entirely in the graphics mode. File storage, however, is in ASCII, so file portability between machines is straightforward. It is good for short, journal-length articles. ChiWriter was designed and written by Cay Horstmann, a mathematician. ChiWriter comes with many font types, which are accessed by the function keys, for displaying special characters and symbols and for creating simple molecular structures. The user can enter mathematical equations or molecular formulas in half-line mode to create the equation or formula as a single entity. The user also can switch to an asynchronous mode in which the individual parts of the equation or molecular structure can be moved separately to make final adjustments. ChiWriter has a Font Designer program that allows the user to edit two fonts at once and even allows the user to juxtapose them, if desired, to form a larger character beyond the boundaries of a single one. The Egg The Egg was written by physicist George Hockney as a WYSIWYG word processor for writing physics journal articles containing math expressions. The program has character fonts for creating chemical structures and a library of common chemical compounds in addition to standard word-processing features. The Egg comes standard with a number of special fonts including Greek, script, small, APL, Gensci, Stick, and German. Appropriate use of these alternate keyboards allows the user to build up complex mathematical formulas. When entering mathematical equations or molecular formulas, the user can define multiple rows, with up to 17 vertically spaced levels per row, to design a single mathematical expression. Users may design their own characters using the MakeFont program that generates characters in an 8X11 matrix (for screen characters) or higher resolution for Toshiba printer fonts. The user accesses alternate keyboards containing the stored font arrays by pressing the ESC key followed by the number of the font (one through eight). User-defined key sequences can be stored in the function keys, which facilitates keying in repeated sequences. The Egg can import Word-
Chemlntosh" DA It's ready when you are.
With Chemlntosh, you draw a structure and transfer it to your word-processing document, without leaving the word processor. This ad was created and printed with Chemlntosh DA. Diagrams are printed with this same quality from any word processor. Chemlntosh has the features of an application. You can undo mistakes, display on-screen help, and resize all objects, even those containing text. You can draw solid or dashed circles, ovals, and arcs by dragging the mouse outside the circle or oval to specify the desired arc. Just click on the endpoints of an arc to add arrows. Chemlntosh is not copy protected. It requires a Macintosh II, SE, Plus, 512K Enhanced,or 512K and a double-sided floppy or hard disk drive. The retail price is $295 ($236 academic).
Call or write for a free demo copy. SoftShell C o m p a n y 716-334-7150 PO Box 632 Henrietta, NY 14467 CIRCLE 154 ON READER SERVICE CARD
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 59, NO. 17, SEPTEMBER 1, 1987 ·
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