RasMol-like scripting
Fri, 09/19/2008 - 09:16
Hi Brad,
Molecules is a really great program. Thank you for this great application!
I'm sure you have thought of this, but incorporating some of interactive scripting capabilities into Molecules (like in RasMol*) would be really fantastic.
If there were a sort of 'command line', the user could enter text commands to manipulate the molecule in a variety of ways (views, highlights, background, etc.). This would alleviate some of the issues with trying to get every command into a GUI widget.
-gf
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*RasMol commands and keywords are documented at
http://www.umass.edu/microbio/rasmol/distrib/rasman.htm#chcomref
Thanks, glad you like it.
RasMol was my primary inspiration for this project, but I only ever used it for visualization. I never got into the scripting side of things. Therefore, I can't comment on the utility of that part of RasMol.
However, I'm not sure how many functions I want to start cramming into a mobile application like this. Many of the applications that you find on the iPhone, especially those written by Apple, have a restricted function set. This due to the limited interface opportunities on the phone. As it is, I worry about the choice of double-tapping on the display to change visualization modes not being intuitive.
I will be adding some new features (ribbon visualization, the ability to load custom molecules), but I think some people have an unrealistic view of what would work on a portable device. From one iTunes review (the one that called this a piece of feature-incomplete beta software): "Here’s what I want to see in future versions: ...Ability to assign atom names / numbers. Ability to generate a crystal packing plot through symmetry. Ability to orient the molecule along the unit cell directions and the mpln/n function from xp." I'm sorry, but I don't think any of that will ever appear in this client.
I think a command line would be hard to use on the phone, and don't know how to have the user cleanly feed in a script file to do what you ask.
Sorry for the long response, I just thought I'd explain some of my thinking. If you have an idea for a clean way to implement this in the interface, I'm all ears.