Peter Murray-Rust and Henry Rzepa have announced new and updated tools and demonstrations for the Chemical Markup Language, described as "the most mature and developed 'science domain specific' application of XML."

Murray-Rust and Rzepa are well know to the XML community, being instrumental in the creation of the XML-DEV mailing list. True to form, the update includes some interest applications including JUMBO 3 a Java based CML viewer and JME a molecular model editor that generates CML markup.

One intriguing demonstration is of JUMBO3-JS, an alternative Jumbo implementation written in Javascript. The demo, which seems to require Internet Explorer, shows how CML files can be parsed using client side Javascript to generate SVG markup that displays a rotating molecular structure.

The chemists seem to be taking great strides in developing interchangeable data formats with an emphasis on community effort and running code. Other scientific domains appear to be following a more formal consortium approach, such as the Interoperable Informatics Infrastructure Consortium. The I3C seems to be aiming to do for the life sciences what CML has done for chemists.