From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Mon May 25 2009 - 23:09:16 CDT

Hi guys,
  I'm still catching up on emails...
The items both of you mention have been on my TODO list for a while,
but I suspect I will not have time to address these until after
VMD 1.8.7 is released. It is somewhat tricky to interpose the necessary
layers of abstraction between the GUI and the plugin interface without
creating various new bugs. I will likely work on this after VMD 1.8.7 is
finished.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 09:52:35AM -0400, Axel Kohlmeyer wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-05-24 at 02:45 -0700, Rob wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > The list of possible file types is too long; when I want to load a new molecule
> > I can choose the file type, but the list provided is inconveniently long.
> > There are about 50 right now....
>
> rob,
>
> in addition to the suggestions that were already given to you
> about a month ago, there is another, even simpler option:
> you just write a "Rob's File Browser" dialog in Tk/Tcl:
>
> all you need is a file browser (Tk ships with a prebuilt one)
> and then a selector with a list of file types that only you
> want to see and a "Load" button. pretty straightforward scripting
> exercise i would say. if you need a "Load into existing Molecule"
> option, it becomes a little bit more complicated, but there are
> plenty of scripts containing a vmd-molecule selector around
> (check out clonerepgui.tcl for example).
>
> > Most of the options in the list I never ever use; in my case only two.
> > Hence, it would be so much better if this list can be make user configurable,
> > so that every user can cut the list to only those items which are used.
>
> there surely is a necessity to make this list a bit configurable.
> there is, e.g., also the problem that several file formats use the
> same extension (.out, .log, .xml), and it would be nice to give
> users an option to set a preference here as well.
>
> > (Note: it should be *user* configurable, so that system wide still all items
> > are available).
>
> i'd rather not turn them off (you'll be needing exactly one of the ones
> that you have configured out, as soon as you enable this feature), but
> rather have a set of "preferred" plugins that are directly visible on
> the top level and then have all of the plugins in groups (by alphabet?)
> as submenus (similar to babel converted plugins).
>
> the problem with this is mainly, that somebody has to find the time to
> program this and in general priorities to change something that is
> working are not as high than to make something work that is not working
> or implement a new feature. if somebody wants to cut his or her teeth
> working on VMD, this may be a project to try out...
>
> cheers,
> axel.
>
> >
> > Rob.
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> =======================================================================
> Axel Kohlmeyer akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu http://www.cmm.upenn.edu
> Center for Molecular Modeling -- University of Pennsylvania
> Department of Chemistry, 231 S.34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6323
> tel: 1-215-898-1582, fax: 1-215-573-6233, office-tel: 1-215-898-5425
> =======================================================================
> If you make something idiot-proof, the universe creates a better idiot.

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078