Chemical Markup Language (CML) has been written to be an application of the new Web language, XML. XML, which is a simple dialect of SGML, has recently been announced at two conferences and received considerable interest. Indeed it is being presented as a split between the two largest browser manufacturers (Netscape and Microsoft). A typical article on the potential of XML is described in: http://www.webweek.com/97Mar24/software/split.html where CML gets an honourable (and essentially accurate) mention! There is a lot of hype about XML (which is being launched at the WWW6 conference next month and where we hope to have a CML/JUMBO demo at the developers' forum). Obviously if XML *does* become a Web standard, it makes it that much easier for people to support CML (and other similar applications). Browsers, parsers, search engines (non-chemical), authoring tools, database front-ends, etc. will all be built for generic applications. The molecular community will 'get this without effort'. However, even if XML does not get adopted by Microsoft and Netscape, this will have no impact on CML, since it is based on industry-strength SGML implementation. Chemistry is sufficiently complex that it requires the power of SGML or the equivalent representation in Object-oriented language. Indeed CML can be used to create an IDL (Interface Definition Language) from which any API (e.g. C++, Java) can be automatically compiled. Put another way, CML is sufficiently powerful that it can be algorithmically transformed into whatever language is or will be used in the next few years. The current Java implementation of CML (JUMBO and related tools) uses a generic approach to structured documents which maps directly onto XML/SGML but could be trivially transformed into any other structured document technology. I am starting to get enquiries and volunteers for writing input routines for JUMBO. If anyone has a 'file format' that they have responsibility for that they would like to input into JUMBO, please let me know. I am naturally particularly keen to see chemical/* MIME types supported, but any files in common use can be considered (especially if they are well documented and stable!) P. -- Peter Murray-Rust, domestic net connection Virtual School of Molecular Sciences http://www.vsms.nottingham.ac.uk/ ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)