Cheminformatics Tutorial Using Python and Silverlight

By Michael Foord -
Try Python is an online interactive Python tutorial using IronPython and Silverlight. The source code is available and open source and the tutorial material is written in a subset of the ReStructured Text markup.

Noel Baoilleach has taken this a step further by creating his own version, including the Webel library library and a tutorial on using it with interactive examples.
Recently I introduced Webel, a Python cheminformatics module that runs entirely on web services. One of the advantages of such a module is that it can be used in places where it is difficult to install a traditional cheminformatics toolkit. Like in your browser.

After some little work, I present Try Python...with Cheminformatics. This adds Webel as well as a short tutorial that introduces many of its features. With a few more tutorials that cover SMILES, InChI and so on in more detail, this could be useful for teaching purposes as well as bridging the gap to having students develop their own Python scripts that use the CDK, OpenBabel or the RDKit.
 Personally I think the Cheminformatics version of Try Python would be improved by the removal of the Python tutorial parts (only part 6 is Cheminformatics specific - making it a bit harder to find!). Creating custom tutorials using Try Python as a base is *fairly* easy (I'm sure it could be easier): it could be a great way of creating online examples of working with .NET or Python libraries.... I hope more people try this out.

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