4.6 Drag and Drop
A powerful drag and drop interface is provided for passing molecules, images
of molecules, and molecular data between applications. Multiple mechanisms of
transfering data via the drag and drop interface are supported.
- Dragging a list of filenames into the List Window (see Chapter
8) will cause those files to be loaded.
- Dragging a list of SMILES into the List Window will cause those SMILES
to be parsed into new molecules and stored in a new list called ``Pasted".
These new molecules will not be assigned 3D coordinates and therefore will not
be visible in the 3D display (see Chapter 5).
- Dragging a list of IUPAC or common chemical names into the List Window
will cause those names to be parsed into new molecules (using Lexichem) and
stored in a new list called ``Pasted". Please note, this functionality requires
a separate license for the Lexichem toolkit available from OpenEye. These new
molecules will not be assigned 3D coordinates and therefore will not be visible
in the 3D display (see Chapter 5).
- Dragging molecules from other molecular visualization programs into the
List Window will cause those molecules to be loaded into a new list called
``Pasted". The ability to load molecules from other applications depends on how
the other applications place molecules on the clipboard. Currently supported
clipboard formats include SMILES, ChemDraw CDX, ISIS Sketch, MDL SD Files, and
OpenEye OEB files. Furthermore, for other molecular visualization programs that
support a drag and drop interface, molecules can be dragged from the List
Window into those applications.
- Dragging molecules from the List Window into other applications will
cause molecules, molecular data, or molecular images to be transfered to that
application depending on how that application expects to receive data. For
instance, dragging molecules into a Text Editor will result in a list of SMILES
corresponding to the dragged molecules to be entered into that application.
- Dragging a 2D depiction from the Spreadsheet (see Chapter
7) will cause that image to be loaded in the associated
application if possible.
Along the same vein, a similar copy and paste interface exists for passing
molecules, images of molecules, and molecular data between applications. The
``Copy" option can be found in the Edit menu and can also be performed
by pressing Ctrl+C on the keyboard. This will copy all of the molecules
in the current scope to the clipboard, unless the active window is the
Spreadsheet (see Chapter 7) in which case it will copy all
of the selected Spreadsheet data to the clipboard instead.
The ``Paste" option can be found in the Edit menu and can also be
performed by pressing Ctrl+V on the keyboard. This will paste any
molecules found on the clipboard into a new list called ``Pasted".
