I attended a small proportion of this conference yesterday. Points I noted were a) The release of a Web version of STN http://stneasy.fiz-karsruhe.de (+ USA and Japan sites) b) The announcement of Beilstein Netfire, which provides full abstracts. No URL yet given. Interestingly, Netfire uses the <font face=symbol>a</font> markup for Greek letters. c) For UK users, the release of BIDS via the Web; http://www.bids.ac.uk/ISI which is a significant improvement on the Telnet interface hitherto used. In short, pretty much everyone is rapidly providing an Web interface, although I also note greatly excessive use of multiple gif images to create a visual effect, rather than what I would regard as more effective use of text. STNEasy for example takes an age to download from Karlsruhe (congestion in the Munich area!) largely because of these wretched gif images. Its a search interface for heavens sake, so why not download the FORM html, and scrap all the pretty but largely useless images. The "lets sculpt a pretty bevelled button" in 2k bytes, rather than take 2 bytes to write out "go" syndrome is going strong! I might add these pages are unfathomable with suppression of gif images. Oh, and while I am on about my pet hates on Web pages, how about the non-wrapping page that requires full screen display on a 17" monitor to display the page in full because its designer happened to have a 21" monitor at their disposal. Henry Rzepa. +44 171 594 5774 (Office) +44 594 5804 (Fax) ----- 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)
of gif images. Oh, and while I am on about my pet hates on Web pages, how about the non-wrapping page that requires full screen display on a 17" monitor to display the page in full because its designer happened to have a 21" monitor at their disposal.
Expect a lot more of this when style sheets start to be used more. Experience here suggests that staff were very slow to get to grips with style sheets in Word. I am sure that many people will publish poor pages using WWW style sheets, perhaps with good content, but with no thought for what hardware/software the reader at the other end has at his disposal. Dr Mark J Winter (Deputy Head of Department) Department of Chemistry, The University, Sheffield S3 7HF, England tel: +44 (0)114 282 4498 fax: +44 (0)114 273 8673 e-m: mark.winter@sheffield.ac.uk http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/staff/mjw/mark-winter.html WebElements is the periodic table on the world-wide web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/web-elements/ The Sheffield Chemdex is a listing of chemistry sites on the world-wide web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/chemdex/ ----- 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)
Hi
of gif images. Oh, and while I am on about my pet hates on Web pages, how about the non-wrapping page that requires full screen display on a 17" monitor to display the page in full because its designer happened to have a 21" monitor at their disposal.
Expect a lot more of this when style sheets start to be used more. Experience here suggests that staff were very slow to get to grips with style sheets in Word. I am sure that many people will publish poor pages using WWW style sheets, perhaps with good content, but with no thought for what hardware/software the reader at the other end has at his disposal.
One of the advantages of style sheets is that they *cascade*. Theoretically, this means that you as the viewer can override any (within certain limits) specification from the author with your own. So, if they provide a poor stylesheet, you can override some or all of it from your own. This should actually *improve* matters Check out http://www.w3.org/ for the latest information I'm not in the slightest bit surprised that people have problems with word stylesheets - the implementation is very poor, particularly as they do not prevent other modifications being applied directly to the paragraph.
Dr Mark J Winter (Deputy Head of Department) Department of Chemistry, The University, Sheffield S3 7HF, England tel: +44 (0)114 282 4498 fax: +44 (0)114 273 8673 e-m: mark.winter@sheffield.ac.uk http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/staff/mjw/mark-winter.html
WebElements is the periodic table on the world-wide web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/web-elements/
The Sheffield Chemdex is a listing of chemistry sites on the world-wide web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/chemdex/
----- 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)
Joel (unusually optimistic) -- Joel.Crisp@bris.ac.uk | ets-webmaster@bris.ac.uk | "I remember Babylon" - Software Engineer, Educational Technology Service | Arthur C Clarke University of Bristol, UK | http://www.ets.bris.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)
of gif images. Oh, and while I am on about my pet hates on Web pages, how about the non-wrapping page that requires full screen display on a 17" monitor to display the page in full because its designer happened to have a 21" monitor at their disposal.
Expect a lot more of this when style sheets start to be used more. Experience here suggests that staff were very slow to get to grips with style sheets in Word. I am sure that many people will publish poor pages using WWW style sheets, perhaps with good content, but with no thought for what hardware/software the reader at the other end has at his disposal.
One of the advantages of style sheets is that they *cascade*. Theoretically, this means that you as the viewer can override any (within certain limits) specification from the author with your own. So, if they provide a poor stylesheet, you can override some or all of it from your own.
This should actually *improve* matters Check out http://www.w3.org/ for the latest information
More specifically http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Style/. Also see http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/author/howto/css-f.htm Don't get me wrong, I think WWW style sheets are good news, probably, *provided* they are used properly, with a light touch, and with proper due regard for non-stylesheets users (the vast majority at present). WebElements is about to be styled, but hopefully unobtrusively and in such a way that non-style users won't suffer. The key word in the above reply is "Theoretically" and the key phrase is "within certain limits". Also: *Theoretically* "this should actually *improve* matters". We'll see the *actuality* in the next year or so. Dr Mark J Winter (Deputy Head of Department) Department of Chemistry, The University, Sheffield S3 7HF, England tel: +44 (0)114 282 4498 fax: +44 (0)114 273 8673 e-m: mark.winter@sheffield.ac.uk http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/staff/mjw/mark-winter.html WebElements is the periodic table on the world-wide web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/web-elements/ The Sheffield Chemdex is a listing of chemistry sites on the world-wide web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/chemdex/ ----- 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)
On Fri, 6 Dec 1996, Joel Crisp wrote: [...]
One of the advantages of style sheets is that they *cascade*. Theoretically, this means that you as the viewer can override any (within certain limits) specification from the author with your own. So, if they provide a poor stylesheet, you can override some or all of it from your own.
This should actually *improve* matters Check out http://www.w3.org/ for the latest information
I am a great supporter of style sheets and the work that W3 is doing. There is a language standard (DSSSL) but it's non trivial to implement so most people will aim for something much simpler. At present AFAIK only text is being considered in style sheets (i.e. how to format and arrange various parts of a document). This is difficult enough. However *we* really have to consider chemical style sheets as well since the way that something is presented affects the way that people like to transport it. So, for example, (using SMILES notation) are the following simply differences in style?: c1ccccc1 C1=CC=CC=C1 (If you don't know SMILES, these are 'aromatic' and 'Kekule' benzene 'structures'). If you are sent the bottom one, what do you want to happen: - leave it precisely as it is because the author wanted to emphasise this on a treatise on valence-bond theory - automatically convert it to the top one (I think the Daylight software does this). - keep them, but also run a method which allows the one to fulfil a search for the other. It gets worse with more complex systems where conventional valence bonds don't work easily (e.g. metal pi-bonding). This will take a long time to solve. However, until we do this, we are still partially linked to the 'gif-only' method of presenting chemical structures. My own iterim solution for CML is that I hold precisely what I am sent but help the user to add whatever software they require for chemical perception, rendering, etc. Another area which I have been trying to tackle is how to display spectra. It's 'obvious' that NMR spectra (and some IR) have the big numbers at the left of the picture, but how do you tell generic software to do that - author, program, user? I fully agree about the value of cascading. I see the following places at which style can be introduced *where the primary purpose of the document is to transfer content*: - as 'hints' in the authoring (e.g. for a spectral object there is a DISPLAY attribute which is not data but gives hints : <... DISPLAY="XREVERSE"... > 1.234 ...</> - as part of the chemical intelligence of the generic chemical browser. e.g. whenever it encounters a molecule with 3D or 2D coordinates it offers the possibility of graphical rendering. (Coordinates have other uses than just drawing pictures :-) - as user options which can be selected in the browser OR as additional user supplied tools (e.g. plug-ins or pluglets). - rendering from a 3rd party application outside the author's or user's control. In the best of all possible worlds these applications would have a compatible stylesheet policy :-) I imagine that this os something that concerns publishing houses as they already have their own house styles for benzene, spectra... So long as they only expect humans to read their output they will probably just translate their current approaches, but if they want machines to read the publications - and they should :-) - the style will need defining precisely. P. Peter Murray-Rust (PeterMR, ) Director, Virtual School of Molecular Sciences Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nottingham University, NG7 2RD, UK; Tel 44-115-9515100 Fax 5110 http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms/; OMF: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/omf/ ----- 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)
participants (4)
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Joel Crisp
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Mark Winter
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peter murray rust
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Rzepa, Henry