The K Desktop Environment

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1. Introduction

KMol is a simple chemical calculator, which calculates molecular weights and elemental composition of compounds given their chemical formula.

1.1 Features

KMol is designed to be able to parse any chemical formula that can be unambiguously interpreted if written as a simple character sequence (i.e., without subscript and superscript formating). If you can understand a chemical formula, chances are KMol will understand it in exactly the same way. If you can't, do you think it is KMol's fault?

KMol can deal with:

  • Unlimited number of nested subgroups: (CH3(C6H3)N(SiMe(CMe3)2))2Y(thf)2(CH(SiMe3)2).
  • Multicomponent compounds: K2SO4+Al2(SO4)3+24H2O.
  • Fractional coefficients: Cu3.14O2.72.
  • User-defined symbols, which override the global defaults.
  • KMol has a built-in definition editor, which is used to define new element or group symbols.

    Even though KMol is designed to be used under KDE, you can also start it from the command line with a chemical formula as an argument (you may need to put in in quotes so that the shell doesn't try to interpret it). It will simply printout the molecular weight and composition, and exit.

    At this point KMol doesn't perform any estimate of the errors involved in the calculations. You are expected to understand that molecular weight and elemental composition data can only be as accurate as the constituent element weights are. Count your significant digits for yourself.

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