Subject: Ongoing debate about standardisation

From: Andy Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 14:30:25 +0000

Hi all

I don't know about the debate re. GUIs as I personally believe that every
persons view of what is 'right' is too subjective. What really bugs me is
the plethora of file formats currently in use and the difficulties related
to converting one into the other. Babel is very good but it is not perfect
and some interconversions between formats can lead to _very_ strange
results indeed. I understand why there have to be a certain number of
formats (eg due to the atom-typing carried out for different force-fields)
but I think a bit of rationalisation wouldn't go amiss. With more and more
of us working with not just ones or tens of compounds but hundreds and
even thousands, the idea of tweaking each structure manually is not just
unattractive but in many cases impossible.

The only analogy I can make over the current debate is related to
automobiles: everyone has their own preference for style, size and colour
but they all use just one of a very few choices of fuel.

Flame-shields on!!!!

Andy

=================================================================
  Andy Jennings              SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals
        "Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of"