A Collaboration Transparence Approach to Share Heterogeneous Single-User Molecule Editors

Abstract

In the biology and chemistry field various types of molecule editors exist. It is convenient for biologist and chemist to use those editors to create and modify representations of molecular structures. Most editors however are designed for use by a single user only. Thus biologists and chemists lack tools for collaborative work. In this paper we present a transparent approach for collaboration. This approach is used to share off-the-shelf single-user applications without modifying the source code and thus to provide those editors with groupware capabilities. On this basis we go a step further by also designing and implementing a mechanism to make biologists and chemists who use heterogeneous single-user molecule editors collaborate with each other with their favorite tools instead of using just one version. Our research can reuse an amount of excellent existing molecule editors. This makes it easy to collaborate for biologists and chemists with a familiar interface. Additionally it saves money and time because it is not necessary to develop new tools from scratch.