Hello Paul, I've really enjoy reading your blog. You're onto something by reviewing synthetic papers the way you do.
Like you, I agree that an InChI on a Webpage is unsightly and unnecessary. Unfortunately, despite many attempts by myself and others, I know of no way to unobtrusively get an intact, long InChI into a Webpage without breaking the layout. Awhile back, I followed the path you're taking now, but with no success. My intent was to have google index the InChI so that it could be found by the InChIMatic service: http://inchimatic.com I've written about my little experiment here: http://depth-first.com/articles/2007/03/05/why-the-web-isnt-ready-for-chemistry Six months later, Google still hasn't indexed the InChI I tried to sneak through by hiding it in my article. Nor have any of the other major search engines. The only thing that comes up are links to the above article, which puts the InChI in plain sight (I used the overflow property to prevent my page layout from breaking -- still, even that has it's problems...) The problem is that Google fights a daily battle royale against spammers and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tricksters. All of the things we can think of to hide InChIs are also the same techniques used by these lugnuts trying to sell junk. Some would even say that trying to hide "meaningless" content such as InChIs in your webpage will result in a penalty in Google's results. I can't vouch for that theory, but who knows? At the very least the content is ignored during Google's indexing process. In Firefox 2/Linux, I couldn't see the alt text by mousing over the second image in your article. Nor in Linux/Konqueror. Recently, the InChI team has released software that builds fixed-length InChIs using a technique called hashing: http://www.iupac.org/inchi/release102.html It's a promising approach, but like InChI will depend on widespread adoption to become useful. Given the current problems, I stick by my conclusion that the Web still isn't ready for chemistry. That's not to say the solution isn't waiting to be discovered - just that it hasn't been found and made public yet. cheers, Rich --- Paul Docherty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi mailing-list... > > Peter Murray-Rust has suggested that I contact the > Blue Obelisk Group > at large for thoughts regarding the inclusion of > InChi data on a blog > page. I write a blog concerning recent publications > in the total > synthesis area of organic chemistry, where the focus > is the discussion > of strategy and reaction conditions. I take > selected > reactions/disconnections from the literature and > redraw everything > with ChemDraw, posting the schemes as JPEGs. > However, I have had > several requests to post InChi data for the > structures. I don't want > the data viewable to the readership at large, and > I'm not sure what is > the best way to include it. > > At first I thought I might hide it in a hidden > division of the code, > but some browsers have problems with that, so what > I've done is to put > the InChi code into the ALT tag of the image > containing the structures > of relevance. > > So far, the blogging software I use (Wordpress 2.0) > hasn't chewed up > the InChi data, and I can see it from FireFox in the > ALT tag on this > page: > > http://totallysynthetic.com/blog/?p=762 > > There is only one instance, that of the third image > in the actual post, > > http://totallysynthetic.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/sarain_a_2.jpg > . > > Does the group think this is an appropriate method > of including the > data? I would appreciate any suggestions, but would > like to emphasise > my lack of infomatics/programming knowledge. I draw > pretty structures > and write about them... > > Thanks for reading the rambling of a pot-boiler! > > Paul > -- > Paul Docherty | > http://www.totallysynthetic.com/blog/ > Burton Research Group | > http://www-burton.ch.cam.ac.uk > Chemical Research Laboratory | T: 01865 275 685 > 12 Mansfield Road, > Oxford, OX1 3TA > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft > Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio > 2005. > http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ > _______________________________________________ > Blueobelisk-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/blueobelisk-discuss > ___________________________________ Richard L. Apodaca http://depth-first.com Blog http://metamolecular.com Company ___________________________________ Richard L. Apodaca http://depth-first.com Blog http://metamolecular.com Company ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Blueobelisk-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/blueobelisk-discuss
