In our dept we have been using something which we call chemmail (for lack of a better term) for a little while. In this message, I will briefly explain it, and then perhaps ask if anyone could act to "beta test" to see if it can be deployed perhaps on a wider scale. Many of us are familar with "enclosing" say a Word document with an email message. But this is really a very unsatisfactory way of sending chemical content (eg 2D/3D coordinates, spectra, protein sequences, wavefunctions, etc etc) since Word can only really handle text, or perhaps embeded objects which might or might not be resolved by OLE at the recipients and. To improve matters, one might use a combination of Chime from MDL and say the Netscape messenger 4.04 module. If a chemical data file in one of the so called chemical MIME formats (see http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/chemime ) is attached to a message, a chemical MIME header is automatically added. The recipient of such a message can use Netscape messenger to read the message. The attachement is shown as a hyperlink, and clicking on it invokes Chime to display the molecule, spectrum, surface etc tc. (Chime 2 does all of this). And hey presto, Chemmail is operation. But of course, many people might wish to use stand-alone mailers, such as eg Eudora or Pine. How can Eudora/Pine be trained to speak the same Chemical MIME language? Well, proceed as follows a) On a Mac, place the file http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/chemical10.sea.hqx (after unpacking) into the same folder as your Eudora application. Ensure you are running Eudora 3.0 or 3.1 (lite or Pro). b) On Win Eudora 3.0, add e.g the following lines(s) to the Eudora.ini file present in the same folder as the Eudora.exe file both=pdb,pdb,TEXT,chemical,x-pdb both=mol,mol,TEXT,chemical,x-mdl-molfile (obviously, a complete list of chemical MIME types can be added in this fashion) c) On Unix Pine 3.9+, add e.g. chemical/x-pdb; netscape %s to your .mailcap file and e.g. chemical/x-pdb pdb to your .mime.types file Finally, ensure that on your file system, the filename qualifier ends in eg .pdb if you want to send a Brookhaven file.
From now on, any combination of Eudora/Pine or Netscape Messenger should correctly resolve chemical data files defined by MIME types.
Well, that's the theory. We have tested three platforms here (Mac, NT and SGI Irix) and it mostly works. Our only problem is persuading Netscape messenger on SGI to attach the file; it currently rolls it up into the main body of the text. We are pondering this; if anyone has a fix, do let us know! I am now seeking volunteers to a) receive files from us to see if you can correctly resolve them and b) to send files to us to see if we can correctly resolve them. If anyone has proposals for chemical MIME tpyes not handled by the current collection, do please contact me. Suggestions for how other mail handling systems might be persuaded to do this are also welcome (eg Microsoft Exchange, etc etc). Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)