The note record contains text distinct from the comments in a text descriptor file. Comments are removed when a descriptor is converted to binary and therefore are not recoverable when the binary file is converted back to text. The note record will survive the interconversion, although only one record will be visible.

The note record is echoed (typically to the monitor) whenever the descriptor is used. In particular, mimesis will echo the note record at the start of a simulation and exam will echo the note record when a descriptor file is opened. Thus the note record is a good place to document the molecular model contained in the descriptor file.

The note record has the format:

note	Nline	Lline
text...
...

The note record starts with the keyword note followed by the number of lines in the note N_line and the maximum width of the lines L_line. Immediately following this header line are N_line lines of text with the lines not exceeding L_line characters per line.

Example:

note   4   50
 
  3DNA model of 10000 base pair random sequence
plasmid. Created December 3, 1996 by DS, Biochem.
                    Dept. UAB
   

In this example, there are four lines of text with each line not exceeding 50 characters. Note the first line is actually empty so only three lines of text appear. This could be a mistake but from now on these four lines (including the first blank line) will be echoed whenever the descriptor is used in mimesis or exam.