On Sat, Sep 11, 2004 at 01:01:04PM -0500, Jack Gill wrote: > I'm a two-week newbie to Lyx. I am a chemist and am interested in using > Lyx to write papers that contain chemical structures. > > I would appreciate any pointers to resources.
I used to use a LaTeX package (ochem) for drawing my structures, but have turned away from it in favor of more traditional GUI tools. I now use chemtool, and occasionally try out xdrawchem. Both have their flaky aspects, but are quite usable for creating images. (Support for Ochem has dropped off. I don't think it's been updated for a while, and I've had continued problems getting its scripts to work properly, as well as certain specific functions.) Chemtool is an xfig frontend. This allows you choices for image exports, and the ability to edit the created structures directly in xfig itself. (This happens with me sometimes when I decide I don't like a particular wedge bond's shape, or whatever...) That, combined with its greater stability in recent releases, has made it my choice for structures. I have played a little with chemeq. This takes a entry-simplified chemical equation and outputs LaTeX code you can copy/paste into LyX directly. It's been a while since I last doodled with it (end of last semester), and only recall thinking I may carry that farther this semester. BTW, I should check again, but the last time I did, SAL was dead as a link. HTH, Kenward -- In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be _teachers_ and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have. - Lee Iacocca
