VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 30 2003 - 10:14:34 CDT

Hi guys,
  The forseeable plan is retain the services of both languages.
Tcl and Python are very different languages. Tcl serves well as an
interactive command language, has a mature package system, and has
clean bindings for Tk. Python is a nicer language, faster in many cases,
and is becoming very popular in this field, so its a natural addition
to VMD, however it isn't as usable as an interactive command interpreter,
and its a pain to get Python linked into VMD on some platforms still.
Ultimately, I'd like to see VMD continue with both Tcl and Python bindings.

The ultimate would be to rewrite all of the VMD interfaces via Swig or
something similar such that any of several popular languages could be
used within VMD. I think for the time being though, I'll be happy just
to have Tcl and Python in VMD and have them work well.

I intend to continue to improve the Python API in VMD, but at the present
moment I'm working on solving the remaining issues we've got with simpler
things like the behavior of the GUI on MacOS X, etc. Once the Windows, Mac
and Unix ports have all settled down a bit after the big shakeup when we
added MacOS X support and rewrote the GUI, I expect to have more time to
work on improving the scripting interfaces in VMD.

Thanks,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 09:01:05AM -0400, Alfredo Valles wrote:
> On Tuesday 30 September 2003 6:58 am, Patrick Ladam wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > What are the future plans concerning gopython, will all tcl modules
> > be rewritten in python or will you guys keep up with bot languages
> > or...?
> >
> > Bye
>
> Thats a very good question. Python is so clear and easy to learn that I think
> many would love a vmd python interface with all capabilities. 

-- 
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