KDE-Forum.org

Hello there.

First of all, I really don't have the intention of starting some sort of "flame wars".

Let me introduce myself. I am a Ph.D. student currently finishing my work on Medicinal Chemistry. About two months ago I finally wiped out my Windows partition and since then I am a proud Kubuntu user. I really loved Linux and because I had already been used lots of free (as free in speech) software (like Firefox, Gaim, Scribus, GIMP, and so on) it was fairily easy to me to get used (and fall in love, I must say) for KDE.

So, for most of my problems I had solutions in the free (as free in speech) world. OpenOffice or KOffice for texts and presentations, Kile for LaTeX typesetting, GIMP and Krita for bitmaps, Karbon14 and Xara Xtreme for vectors, Scribus for DTP, Kopete for not losing contact with my friends in MSN/Windows users, Quanta+ and Aptana for web developing, and so on.

But I have a problem. After testing several 2D-chemical drawing softwares, I just couldn't find anything good for use. Of course, there is several packages for chemical drawing in linux: xdrawchem, BKchem, JMol, gChemPaint, etc. But none of them are even a match for MDL ISIS/Draw (which is NOT a good 2D-drawing editor, and is just free "as in free beer" software). It is frustating for me to use ACD/ChemDraw under Wine to get things going. First of all, is SLOW. Painfully slow. Chemists doesn't have time and/or patience to draw in slow applications. They want things working. I do have patience. But most of my fellow chemists doesn't. And that is why most of them are still on Windows.

In my humble opinion, Linux (in a broad sense) has great tools for lots of the today's scientist's need, specially in mathematics and physics. Even in 3D-chemistry Linux is far better than Windows. But in 2D-chemistry is it not.

My second problem is that I am not Donald Knuth. (explaining: D. Knuth created the TeX typesetting system to solve his problem of bad digital typesetting for one of his mathematical books). The only programming language (if it can be called a programming language) that I know is JavaScript. I don't know C, or C++, or Ruby, or Phyton. Wish I knew. I could get into the grips and make my own GPLd damn good 2D-chemistry editor and release it to the community and with this helping my chemical friends to see the light.

The thing that I have is motivation. Damn good strong motivation to start a project with a single aim: to make the best ever 2D-chemical drawing editor for Linux and for ANY platform. Better than ACD/ChemDraw and CambridgeSoft's ChemOffice (by far the best software in the field). And, most of all, free. Free for use and modification. Free as free in speech and as in free beer too.

This is what I need: some folks good in programming for the KDE environment, an UI designer, and a chemist (that would be me).

Anyone interested?