Ketcher

Overview

Ketcher is an open-source web-based chemical structure editor. Being written on pure JavaScript it incorporates high performance, good portability and light weight.

Features

Standalone mode

Ketcher supports standalone mode in which no server support is required. In this mode SMILES loading and automatic layout are not available.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for rendering

Ketcher uses SVG to achieve the best quality of in-browser chemical structure rendering. SVG standard is supported by most of modern browsers and provides smooth and light-weight drawing.

Note: Internet Explorer doesn't support SVG till version 8 inclusive. IE rendering is based on VML (Vector Markup Language) instead.

SMILES strings

SMILES is a compact format for chemical structure representation. Ketcher gives you ability to load and save structure in this useful format.

Automatic layout (clean up)

Server-side structure layout algorithm is developed on C++ as a part of our toolkit. It provides fast 2D structure representation which satisfies common chemical drawing standards.

Other features

Hotkeys. For more rapid and convenient way of structure drawing Ketcher offers variety of hot keys. See Editing Tips for list of hot keys.

Stereochemistry. Complete stereochemistry support during editing, loading and saving chemical structures.

Undo/Redo. Ketcher stores a full history of performed actions and user can rollback to any previous state.

In-place atom editing. Direct input of atom label and charge. See Editing Tips for details.

Molfiles support. In addition to SMILES strings Ketcher also supports Molfile saving and loading.

Supported browsers

Complete functionality of Ketcher has been tested on the following browsers:

Internet Explorer 7+
Firefox 3.5+
Safari 4+
Opera 9.6+
Chrome 2+

IE6 support is planned in near future.

Third-party code

Ketcher rendering is based on a Raphaël JavaScript library. Other code improvements are made using Prototype.

Current icon set was taken from Tango Desktop Project

Demo

You can try Ketcher here.

Download

Look at the Downloads page for the installation package and sample server implementation.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 3 of the License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Commercial Availability

If AGPL-licensed Ketcher does not fit your needs, please contact us at info@scitouch.net to discuss the purchase of a commercial license. You may need the commercial license if you want to:

Receive ongoing support and maintenance
Include Ketcher as component in your proprietary software product

Indigo