Subject: Re: Biosym scripting language

From: [email-masked] (Ton van Daelen)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 14:32:14 -0700

Hello Pieter -

The Insight scripting language is indeed called BCL, which stands 
for Biosym Command Language. The syntax has now been fully documented 
(in the Insight user manual) and we can assist you with any questions
that you still might have. The simulation environment Discover has its own 
scripting language which is based on Tcl. 

With many users migrating to the Cerius2 environment, we have developed 
a C2 scripting language based on Tcl, hence called C2.Tcl. This language 
takes advantage of all the Tcl control structures, list functions etc, 
and combines that with Cerius2 commands. In addition you can add a 
simple GUI to a script using a Tk like GUI definition file. 

However, C2.Tcl is designed for relatively simple customization. For an
efficient and flexible integration of an external code, you can choose
to use the C2.SDK toolkit and API set to write a much more interactive
interface to your code.

For more information on C2.Tcl and C2.SDK visit the following URLs:
http://www.msi.com/support/sdk/
http://www.msi.com/support/sdk/pub/scripting/macro_language.html

Regards - Ton

>>That's actually what Biosym has been doing for last couple of years.
>>Their script language was actually Tcl
>>(if I am not mistaken...)
>>
>Discover's scripting language is TCL, but the regular Biosym scripting
>language is an abomination called BCL (Biosym Control Language ?). The
>syntax is not fully documented (kind of strange as there is a BCL
>interpreter), nor does there seem to be anybody at MSI who has anywhere
>near complete BCL knowledge. When we were still actively working on our
>BForce implementation (the MSI version is known as Affinity), we ran into
>many problems, most often related to parameter passing. It would have made
>sense to change from BCL to TCL with specific Biosym extensions if it were
>not for the fact that it can be expected (conjecture on my part) that over
>time users will migrate from insightII to Cerius2 and, therefore, revamping
>insightII does not make sense.
>
> Pieter Stouten

  Ton van Daelen        Product Manager Software Developer's Kit

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