Word Processing incorporating Structures

Chemists talk to each other by drawing pictures, and when nearly two decades ago software became readily available that allowed this to be done electronically, the office environment for chemists changed in a remarkable manner. Well established commercial office packages allow even the most complicated chemical structures to be drawn easily and incorporated into word processing software to use electronic notebooks (see Section B, 3.3.2.6) access databases both external and internally on CD-ROMs integrate into a LIMS use a registration system carry out molecular modelling and determine structure activity relationships [B-ll]. 

Other software that has been recently integrated into SOCRATES includes FLATLAND, a package designed to incorporate chemical structures and schemes into word processing systems, and 3D-SEARCH, which extends our searching capability into databases with 3-D structure coordinates (e.g., the Cambridge Crystal Structure... 

It may be tempting to assimilate molecular complexity (complexity of structure) with synthetic complexity (complexity of the synthetic process). However, indices of molecular complexity, even ones such as that described by Bertz, are not equally good as indices of synthetic difficulty. For one thing, there are features such as thermodynamic stability that cannot easily be incorporated into such an index. Also, because each individual feature of structure places constraints on the specific chemical reactions and conditions that may be applied during the time it is present in the synthetic sequence, and because synthetic difficulties may arise through the synergy of certain structural elements, complexity increases nonlinearly with the accumulation of structural elements. In other words, specific combinations of the same structural features can... 

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