Chemidentifier – Synthesis-order numbering and hyperlinking of chemical compounds

chemidentifier numbers the compounds of a synthesis-chemistry paper in the logical order of the synthesis – the order in which they are declared – rather than the order in which they first appear in the text. Every printed number is clickable and jumps to the scheme or paragraph that introduces the compound.

Three commands cover the common case: \chemid* declares a compound (optionally with a rich display form and a raw bookmark form), \chemid uses it anywhere in running text, captions or headings, and \chemidhere marks the point a number should link to – typically next to a reaction scheme. Multiple declarations and uses are accepted as comma-separated lists and are automatically contracted into ranges (1a-c) or contiguous groups (1a,b) the way a human author would write them by hand.

Compounds can be organized in a single level of parent/child hierarchy (benz, benz.cl, benz.br...), and \chemidfamily declares a templated family where the numbering style, child format (subscript, superscript, Greek letters...) and a placeholder value are set once for every child.

The package is written in LaTeX3 (expl3). Like \ref/\label, numbering and links settle over two compilations. It works with or without hyperref, and with pdfLaTeX, LuaLaTeX and XeLaTeX; an optional LuaLaTeX-only helper substitutes compound labels directly inside Inkscape-exported .pdf_tex figures.

Version 2 (the default) adds templated families, anchors that carry the links themselves, and stricter validation; version 1 is frozen and stays available via the version=1 package option for documents written against it.

Download the contents of this package in one zip archive (1.6M).