Journal drawing presets

Choose a journal directly from the preset selector beside the color theme selector and sun/moon canvas toggle. Selecting a journal applies its dimensions and scales the drawing in one Undo step. Choose Drawing style… at the bottom for a preview and detailed settings. The selector contains JACS / ACS, Nature, RSC, Angewandte, SYNLETT / SYNTHESIS, and Custom. Each journal choice has a Publisher instructions ↗ link in the panel.

These five presets use publisher recommendations or publisher downloads. The ChemDraw standard baseline and bundled variants are excluded. Publisher guidance takes precedence where written dimensions differ from older downloads.

Publisher settings and sources

Reviewed 26 September 2026. Dimensions are publication points; values below are rounded for readability. The reusable .reshiki-style files in presets/drawing/ retain source precision.

| Preset / publisher instructions | Font | Label | Bond | Line | Bold | Margin | Hash | Spacing | |—|—|—:|—:|—:|—:|—:|—:|—:|—:| | JACS / ACS | Arial | 10 | 14.4 | 0.6 | 2 | 1.6 | 2.5 | 18% | | Nature | Helvetica | 6 | 10.8 | 0.5953 | 1.559 | 1.191 | 1.701 | 18% | | RSC | Arial | 7 | 12.2 | 0.5 | 1.6 | 1.25 | 1.8 | 20% | | Angewandte | Arial | 12 | 17 | 0.75 | 2.602 | 2 | 2.602 | 18% | | SYNLETT / SYNTHESIS | Arial | 6 | 10.12 | 0.5669 | 1.389 | 0.9071 | 1.757 | 18% |

• ACS: Published ACS-1996 dimensions. The ACS graphics page was last updated in 2006; it permits Helvetica on Mac and Arial on PC. ReShiki retains Arial for cross-platform compatibility and its existing default.
• Nature: Uses the publisher’s ChemDraw stylesheet, including Helvetica 6 pt. See also the chemical structure style guide.
• RSC: Uses the explicit point values in the publisher’s author instructions, including 12.2 pt bonds and 0.5 pt lines. The 1.25 pt label margin, unspecified in the written guidance, comes from the publisher’s structure template download.
• Angewandte: Uses the publisher’s stationery download, a legacy ChemDraw 4.5 CDS file dated 2003 in the archive.
• SYNLETT / SYNTHESIS: Uses final-size dimensions illustrated in the February 2026 publisher instructions, converting centimetres with 72 / 2.54 points per centimetre. These are already final-size values: do not reduce them again to 69%. The 69% instruction refers to ChemDraw’s bundled stationery. Arial is retained because the illustrated settings do not specify a font family.

The settings cover label typography and bond dimensions. Page layout, independent caption formatting, template artwork and chemical naming conventions remain separate. Matching dimensions does not guarantee identical rendering or compliance with every journal’s submission requirements.

Custom styles and downloaded stationery

Open Manage styles… from the style selector to edit the current dimensions. Custom settings appear as Custom in the selector. The fixed footer has Import, Export, and Save icons: Save applies the draft in one Undo step; returning to Properties leaves it unapplied. Export offers .reshiki-style or ChemDraw .cds.

Import publisher .cds, .cdx or .cdxml files directly in the style editor. Modern CDX and the legacy implicit-root Angewandte CDS format are supported. Only document font and bond settings are read; embedded artwork is skipped. Invalid or incomplete settings are rejected. Native JSON is limited to 64 KB and ChemDraw stationery to 16 MB.

Direct journal selection scales existing geometry with its bond length. In the detailed editor, Scale layout with bond length is off by default; enable it to resize existing geometry as well as setting the dimensions of new bonds.

Canvas colors and interface appearance

The sun/moon toggle beside the preset and color theme selectors changes document page colors independently of its journal dimensions. The same setting is available in Page setup. Dark canvas displays and exports black paper with white bonds and labels. Colored vectors adapt in lightness while retaining their hue; raster pictures retain their original pixels. The canvas choice is saved in the document and can be undone.

Publication, Presentation, Pastel, and Jmol control atom colors independently of the journal preset and light/dark canvas. Presentation and Pastel derive from the Jmol element color reference: Presentation uses lightness 50% and Jmol chroma × 2 on light paper, and lightness 70% with chroma × 1 on dark paper; Pastel uses softer tones. Gamut mapping and automatic-label contrast checks can adjust the displayed colors. Both brighten on dark canvases and retain neutral carbon/hydrogen labels. Jmol keeps the reference palette, with label brightness adjusted for readable contrast. All three use colored element-picker tiles with regular-weight symbols. Ring interiors use a separate palette adapted to each canvas, and automatic atom labels stay legible over light and dark fills.

File exports and printing carry the visible canvas colors and background. Clipboard images and editable copies always have transparent backgrounds, retaining the visible bond and label colors. Dark drawings therefore copy as white ink without a black page rectangle. No separate dark preset is needed.

In View → Interface, choose Match canvas, Light, or Dark for the surrounding interface only. This application preference is remembered between launches and never changes the canvas or output.

Comparing actual drawings

cargo run --example journal_styles -- artifacts/journal-styles/comparison
python3 scripts/compare_journal_styles.py artifacts/journal-styles/comparison

The generator uses identical aspirin, caffeine and alanine coordinates for every renderer, scaled to each preset’s physical bond length. The Python script requires ChemDraw on macOS and saves actual SVG, PDF, CDXML and CDX captures from isolated temporary documents. The comparison page contains the same five publisher presets as the app. Native CDX settings are checked to 0.00002 pt (spacing to 0.000001 of bond length); CDXML rounds to 0.01 pt.

Downloaded source files and render captures live under ignored artifacts/journal-styles/. Proprietary stationery binaries are not committed. presets/drawing/sources.json records publisher links, original filenames, source hashes and extracted settings.

Drawing styles export separately as .reshiki-style or ChemDraw .cds. Color themes export as .reshiki-theme, containing both light and dark palettes. See sharing styles and themes and the theme library guide.