Recently on the OpenBabel-development mailing list, it was concluded that a new SMILES specification is needed, created and maintained by the open-source community.
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=46F69F86.3090409%40emolecules.com&forum_name=openbabel-devel I agreed to start the project, and the discussion concluded with: Noel O'Boyle wrote: > Could I suggest this be coordinated under the Blue Obelisk umbrella? So here I am. A first draft of a new SMILES specification is complete. As one of the two original authors of Daylight's SMILES chapter in their Theory Manual, and one of the authors of the Daylight SMILES Toolkit, I felt uniquely qualified to get the ball rolling. However, I must emphasize that my goal is to make SMILES a true community standard. From the preface to the new (as-yet-unpublished) SMILES specification: > SMILES was originally developed as a proprietary standard by Daylight > Chemical Information Systems. Since the introduction of SMILES in the > late 1980's, it has become widely accepted as a defacto standard for > exchange of molecular structures. Many independently-written SMILES > software packages have been written in C, C++, Java, Python, LISP, and > probably even FORTRAN. > > At this point in the history of SMILES, is appropriate for the > chemistry community to develop a new, non-proprietary specification > for the SMILES language. Daylight's SMILES Theory Manual has long been > the "gold standard" for the SMILES language, but as a proprietary > specification, it limits the universal adoption of SMILES. We salute > Daylight for their past contributions, and the excellent SMILES > documentation they provided free of charge for the past two decades. I have several questions: 1. Where should the document be posted for review and/or editing? On the Blue Obelisk SourceForge repository? (And if so, where? I was quite baffled trying to find anything.) Under the OpenBabel SourceForge repository? On one of my own servers? 2. What is the best forum for discussion about this document? This mailing list? OpenBabel's? Both? 3. How does the community handle "membership" in a group dedicated to creating a document such as this? Is there a formal mechanism for creating some sort of working group, or is it all ad-hoc? Craig James ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
