From pat@mercury.aichem.arizona.edu Thu Feb 24 15:03:11 1994 Received: from mercury.aichem.arizona.edu for pat@mercury.aichem.arizona.edu by www.ccl.net (8.6.4/930601.1506) id OAA27133; Thu, 24 Feb 1994 14:23:46 -0500 Received: by mercury.aichem.arizona.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA15988; Thu, 24 Feb 94 12:15:07 -0700 Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 12:13:07 -0700 (MST) From: Pat Walters Subject: Re: CCL:Collaborative software development To: chemistry@ccl.net In-Reply-To: Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Our file conversion program Babel provides another example of collaborative development via the internet. We designed the program with an open architecture which facilitates the easy inclusion of new file formats. In addition we have provided a "Babel Developer's Guide" which provides step by step instructions on how to add new file formats to the program. Adding a new reader or writer routine typically requires less than 50 lines of C code. When we released the program in December it supported 16 file formats. Now, due to submissions from around the world, Babel supports 35 file formats and the number is still growing. In addition to acting as file conversion program Babel can be compiled into a library which can provide a variety of routines including : - assignment of bonds - assignment of hybridized atom types - assignment of bond orders - determination of interatomic distances, bond angles and torsion angles - conversion between internal, fractional and Cartesian coordinates. - addition and deletion of hydrogens - a number of routines for vector manipulation The program runs under Unix, MS-DOS, and the Mac. I've heard that there are also ports to Atari and Open VMS, but I haven't seen them. We are currently using the Babel library as the core for our development efforts, and we plan to release additions to Babel and the library in the coming months. There will be two presentations on Babel (#36 and #37 in the Division of Chemical Information) at the San Diego ACS meeting. For more information on babel finger babel@mercury.aichem.arizona.edu or send mail to babel@mercury.aichem.arizona.edu _________________________________________________________________________ Pat Walters pat@mercury.aichem.arizona.edu Graduate Student Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence in Chemistry * Dept of Chemistry * * * University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 85721 * * * Voice : 602-621-6334 FAX : 602-621-8407 *** "At least it's a dry heat" * _______________________________________________________*__________________