chem
groff preprocessor for producing chemical structure diagrams
see also :
groff - pic - groffer
Synopsis
chem
[option...]
[--] [filespec...]
chem
-h | --help
chem
-v | --version
add an example, a script, a trick and tips
examples
source
bond chem HIS 19 NE2 HEM1 107 FE
*EOD
description
chem
produces chemical structure diagrams. Today’s version
is best suited for organic chemistry (bonds, rings). The
chem program is a groff preprocessor like
eqn, pic, tbl, etc. It generates
pic output such that all chem parts are
translated into diagrams of the pic language.
The program
chem originates from the Perl source file
chem.pl. It tells pic to include a copy of the
macro file chem.pic. Moreover the groff source
file pic.tmac is loaded.
In a style
reminiscent of eqn and pic, the chem
diagrams are written in a special language.
A set of
chem lines looks like this
.cstart
chem data
.cend
Lines
containing the keywords .cstart and .cend
start and end the input for chem, respectively. In
pic context, i.e., after the call of .PS,
chem input can optionally be started by the line
begin chem and ended by the line with the single
word end instead.
Anything
outside these initialization lines is copied through without
modification; all data between the initialization lines is
converted into pic commands to draw the diagram.
As an
example,
.cstart
CH3
bond
CH3
.cend
prints two
CH3 groups with a bond between them.
To actually
view this, you must run chem followed by
groffer:
chem
[file...] | groffer
If you want to
create just groff output, you must run chem
followed by groff with the option -p for
the activation of pic:
chem
[file...] | groff -p ...
copying
Copyright (C) 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation,
Inc.
This file is part of chem, which is part of groff,
a free software project. You can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation, either
version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with groff, see the files COPYING and
LICENSE in the top directory of the groff source
package. Or read the man page gpl(1). You can also
write to the Free Software Foundation, 51 Franklin St - Fifth
Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
files
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/pic/chem.pic
A collection of pic macros needed by chem.
/usr/share/groff/1.22.1/tmac/pic.tmac
A macro file which redefines .PS and .PE to center
pic diagrams.
/usr/share/doc/groff-base/examples/chem/*.chem
Example files for chem.
/usr/share/doc/groff-base/examples/chem/122/*.chem
Example files from the classical chem book 122.ps.
option usage
There are no other options than -h, --help,
-v, and --version; these options provoke the
printing of a version or usage information, respectively, and all
filespec arguments are ignored. A filespec argument
is either a file name of an existing file or a minus character
-, meaning standard input. If no argument is specified
then standard input is taken automatically.
the language
The chem input language is rather small. It provides rings
of several styles and a way to glue them together as desired,
bonds of several styles, moieties (e.g., C, NH3,
...), and strings.
Setting Variables
There are some variables that can be set by commands. Such
commands have two possible forms, either
variable value
or
variable = value
This sets the given variable to the argument value.
If more arguments are given only the last argument is taken, all
other arguments are ignored.
There are only a few variables to be set by these commands:
textht arg
Set the height of the text to arg; default is 0.16.
cwid arg
Set the character width to arg; default is 0.12.
db arg
Set the bond length to arg; default is 0.2.
size arg
Scale the diagram to make it look plausible at point size
arg; default is 10 point.
Bonds
This
bond
[direction] [length n]
[from Name|picstuff]
draws a single bond in direction from nearest corner of
Name. bond can also be double bond, front
bond, back bond, etc. (We will get back to Name
soon.)
direction is the angle in degrees (0 up, positive
clockwise) or a direction word like up, down,
sw (= southwest), etc. If no direction is specified,
the bond goes in the current direction (usually that of the last
bond).
Normally the bond begins at the last object placed; this can be
changed by naming a from place. For instance, to make a
simple alkyl chain:
A length in inches may be specified to override the default
length. Other pic commands can be tacked on to the end of
a bond command, to created dotted or dashed bonds or to specify a
to place.
Rings
There are lots of rings, but only 5 and 6-sided rings get much
support. ring by itself is a 6-sided ring; benzene
is the benzene ring with a circle inside. aromatic puts a
circle into any kind of ring.
ring
[pointing (up|right|left|down)]
[aromatic] [put Mol at n]
[double i,j k,l ...]
[picstuff]
The vertices of a ring are numbered 1, 2, ... from the vertex
that points in the natural compass direction. So for a hexagonal
ring with the point at the top, the top vertex is 1, while
if the ring has a point at the east side, that is vertex 1.
This is expressed as
R1: ring pointing up
R2: ring pointing right
The ring vertices are named .V1, ..., .Vn,
with .V1 in the pointing direction. So the corners of
R1 are R1.V1 (the top), R1.V2,
R1.V3, R1.V4 (the bottom), etc., whereas for
R2, R2.V1 is the rightmost vertex and R2.V4
the leftmost. These vertex names are used for connecting bonds or
other rings. For example,
R1: benzene pointing right
R2: benzene pointing right with .V6 at R1.V2
creates two benzene rings connected along a side.
Interior double bonds are specified as
double n1,n2 n3,n4 ...;
each number pair adds an interior bond. So the alternate form of
a benzene ring is
ring double 1,2 3,4 5,6
Heterocycles (rings with something other than carbon at a vertex)
are written as
put X at V, as in
R: ring put N at 1 put O at 2
In this heterocycle, R.N and R.O become synonyms
for R.V1 and R.V2.
There are two 5-sided rings. ring5 is pentagonal with a
side that matches the 6-sided ring; it has four natural
directions. A flatring is a 5-sided ring created by
chopping one corner of a 6-sided ring so that it exactly matches
the 6-sided rings.
The description of a ring has to fit on a single line.
Moieties and Strings
A moiety is a string of characters beginning with a capital
letter, such as N(C2H5)2. Numbers are converted to subscripts
(unless they appear to be fractional values, as in N2.5H). The
name of a moiety is determined from the moiety after special
characters have been stripped out: e.g., N(C2H5)2) has the name
NC2H52.
Moieties can be specified in two kinds. Normally a moiety is
placed right after the last thing mentioned, separated by a
semicolon surrounded by spaces, e.g.,
B1: bond ; OH
Here the moiety is OH; it is set after a bond.
As the second kind a moiety can be positioned as the first word
in a pic-like command, e.g.,
CH3 at C + (0.5,0.5)
Here the moiety is CH3. It is placed at a position
relative to C, a moiety used earlier in the chemical
structure.
So moiety names can be specified as chem positions
everywhere in the chem code. Beneath their printing
moieties are names for places.
The moiety BP is special. It is not printed but just
serves as a mark to be referred to in later chem commands.
For example,
bond ; BP
sets a mark at the end of the bond. This can be used then for
specifying a place. The name BP is derived from branch
point (i.e., line crossing).
A string within double quotes " is interpreted as a part
of a chem command. It represents a string that should be
printed (without the quotes). Text within quotes "..." is treated
more or less like a moiety except that no changes are made to the
quoted part.
Names
In the alkyl chain above, notice that the carbon atom C
was used both to draw something and as the name for a place. A
moiety always defines a name for a place; you can use your own
names for places instead, and indeed, for rings you will have to.
A name is just
Name: ...
Name is often the name of a moiety like CH3, but it
need not to be. Any name that begins with a capital letter and
which contains only letters and numbers is valid:
First:
bond
bond 30 from First
Miscellaneous
The specific construction
bond ... ; moiety
is equivalent to
bond
moiety
Otherwise, each item has to be on a separate line (and only one
line). Note that there must be whitespace after the semicolon
which separates the commands.
A period character . or a single quote ’ in the
first column of a line signals a troff command, which is
copied through as-is.
A line whose first non-blank character is a hash character
(#) is treated as a comment and thus ignored. However,
hash characters within a word are kept.
A line whose first word is pic is copied through as-is
after the word pic has been removed.
The command
size n
scales the diagram to make it look plausible at point
size n (default is 10 point).
Anything else is assumed to be pic code, which is copied
through with a label.
Since chem is a pic preprocessor, it is possible to
include pic statements in the middle of a diagram to draw
things not provided for by chem itself. Such pic
statements should be included in chem code by adding
pic as the first word of this line for clarity.
The following pic commands are accepted as chem
commands, so no pic command word is needed:
define Start the definition of pic macro within
chem.
[
Start a block composite.
]
End a block composite.
{
Start a macro definition block.
}
End a macro definition block.
The macro names from define statements are stored and
their call is accepted as a chem command as well.
WISH LIST
This TODO list was collected by Brian Kernighan.
Error checking is minimal; errors are usually detected and
reported in an oblique fashion by pic.
There is no library or file inclusion mechanism, and there is no
shorthand for repetitive structures.
The extension mechanism is to create pic macros, but these
are tricky to get right and don’t have all the properties of
built-in objects.
There is no in-line chemistry yet (e.g., analogous to the $...$
construct of eqn).
There is no way to control entry point for bonds on groups.
Normally a bond connects to the carbon atom if entering from the
top or bottom and otherwise to the nearest corner.
Bonds from substituted atoms on heterocycles do not join at the
proper place without adding a bit of pic.
There is no decent primitive for brackets.
Text (quoted strings) doesn’t work very well.
A squiggle bond is needed.
bugs
Report bugs to
the bug-groff mailing
list (mailto:bug-groff[:at:]gnu[:dot:]org). Include a complete, self-contained example that
will allow the bug to be reproduced, and say which version
of groff and chem you are using. You can get
both version numbers by calling chem --version.
You can also
use the groff mailing
list (mailto:groff[:at:]gnu[:dot:]org), but you must first subscribe to this list. You can
do that by visiting the
groff
mailing list web page (http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff).
See
groff(1) for information on availability.
see also
groff ,
pic , groffer .
You can still
get the original
chem
awk source (http://cm.bell-labs.com/netlib/typesetting/chem.gz). Its README file was used for this
manual page.
The other
classical document on chem is
122.ps (http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr/122.ps.gz).
author
This file was
written by Bernd Warken. It is based on the documentation of
Brian
Kernighan (http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/bwk/index.html)’s original awk version of
chem.