Dear Branden One the papers which cite the `chem` paper by Bentley, Jelinsky, Kernigham I became aware of is "LITTLE LANGUAGES FOR PICTURES IN AWK" by Bentley. There is a small section (around figure 7) about `chem`, too -- mirrored/rescued for example in Arnold Robbin's public `dformat` repository
<https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/dformat> however it was not yet possible for me to replicate for instance the example of the Newman projection -- even with `chem` and a block fenced by `.cstart` and `.cend`. In `groff-1.23.0/contrib/chem/chem.pl` I didn't notice a function/routine with either `Newman`, or `newman`. Could this mean (in analogy to `awk` vs for instance `gawk` and `nawk`) that there are multiple implementations of `chem`? > > Would someone like to volunteer to take over maintenance of GNU chem? > For now, it is not a spontaneous agreement on my side to work on the code because it has been for a quite long time I did not write Perl. Though without a link to a specific web page, I remember Kernighan once listed wishes / desiderata to improve `chem` further -- maybe compiled when GUIs like ChemDraw to prepare drawings where not yet this popular, as they are today. Does it render `chem` obsolete? I don't think so -- there still is the need (in chemistry related writing) for an occasional sum formula in a running text, or a brief block of a redox reaction (like `2 H2 + O2 -> 2 H2O`). Best regards, Norwid
