[texhax] package for importing chemical structure files

[Joseph Wright]

Demyan Prokopchuk wrote:
> Dear tug,
> 
> Is there a package for directly importing chemical structure files from 
> MarvinSketch, Chemdraw, ChemSketch or any other drawing program?
> 
> I found this (http://sourceforge.net/projects/chemdrawinlatex/files/), 
> but I cannot find the files online.....
> 
> I know packages exist for drawing molecules (mostly organic ones) in 
> tex, but I would like to use a standalone program (like MarvinSketch, 
> Chemdraw, ChemSketch) to build molecules and then import them into a tex 
> document.  Having to export my chemical structures as eps files and then 
> importing them into tex is a huge hassle, especially when I have to 
> modify the structures.
> 
> Unless something has changed since 2007 
> (http://www.tug.org/pipermail/texhax/2007-April/008302.html), I think I 
> may be out of luck.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Demyan

Hello Demyan,

As a synthetic chemist myself, I stick to ChemDraw then EPS export. I 
can't say I find it a big hassle, but I guess it depends on your point 
of view. As most of these formats are binary, you couldn't use them 
directly with TeX in any case. I've toyed with the idea of trying to 
parse ChemDraw's XML output in the past, but I suspect that this will 
gain little over using the EPS output (editing is still going to mean 
going back to ChemDraw).
--
Joseph Wright