*Off topic* - Chemistry

[Vince]

Hello all,

I am sorry to be posting this here but since this group has helped me so
much in the past, I could only think of this group to answer this weird
question that I have.

We need to generate XML tags (based on a given DTD) from Word documents.

In one such word document (about chemistry) we encountered something like
this:

C=C<

Our XML dept. wants to know what that means! I understand it is a chemical
formula and that "=" means bonding but what about the ">" and "<". We need
to know the ISO entity for this. (It cannot be &lt; and &gt; because this is
Chemistry and not math).

I did a google but didn't come up with much and I wasn't such a great
chemistry student in my school days!

Can somebody by any chance point me in some direction?

Thanks!

Vince

 

[Helmut Weber MVP]

Hi Vince,

a friend of mine told me,
that hydrogen is often omitted in such formulas,

und that the complete formula is probably:

H H

C=C<

H H

Use a non-proportional font to display it.

Helmut Weber

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Vince,

a friend of mine told me,
that hydrogen is often omitted in such formulas,

und that the complete formula is probably:

H H
H H

Use a non-proportional font to display it.

Helmut Weber

That's precisely correct. I used to be an editor for a science text
publisher, and dealt with this often. To expand a bit...

Each C (carbon) atom has four bonds. The = sign represents a double
bond, where two of the bonds from each carbon go to the other carbon.
The remaining two bonds on each carbon atom attach to hydrogen atoms,
which are often omitted. The > and < symbols are shorthand for two
bonds each; if the structure was hand-drawn, each line would point
approximately to the center of the C and not be connected to the other
line. However, that's very hard to type in a word processor.

If you're going to try to reproduce this in text on an HTML page, I
think you should do it with the &gt; and &lt; characters, just as you
typed them in the original post. It will be recognizable to any
chemist and most chemistry students.

 

[Vince]

Helmut / Jay,

Thanks a lot!

You've been of great help in VBA and in Chemistry!

This clears my doubts and we'll proceed with &lt; and &gt;

Thanks again.

Vince

 

[Word Heretic]

G'day "Vince" <[email protected]>,

It indicates the presence of free bonding sites. Thus each carbon has
a double-link bond to each other (=) and two free bonds as if the ><
were lil lines.


Steve Hudson - Word Heretic

steve from wordheretic.com (Email replies require payment)
Without prejudice


Vince reckoned: