VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Sun Sep 30 2012 - 11:11:54 CDT

Hi,
  VMD uses FLTK to open and manage the OpenGL window on the
MacOS X platforms. To support the new retina display, the code in
FLTK will have to be updated accordingly. Until FLTK is updated
to support the retina display, there's not much to do on the VMD side.
This is somewhat complicated by the fact that the retina display is
likely not supported at all under the older Carbon APIs used by the
previous stable revs of VMD, and so this probably also requires using
Cocoa, and that most likely requires that we would also use the
experimental branch of Tcl/Tk with Cocoa support. The only problem with
that last part is that combination has already been tried, for the
experimental 64-bit builds of VMD, and thus far it's not nearly as stable
as the older revs of FLTK, Tcl/Tk, based on the original Carbon APIs...
Anyway, the work to do in VMD is likely minimal, most of what is involved
affects FLTK and getting FLTK and Tcl/Tk to cooperate well with Cocoa.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 12:40:23PM +0200, FX wrote:
> Dear VMD dev(s?),
>
> I wonder: what is the plan w.r.t. support for Apple's Retina displays (on Mac OS >= 10.7)? VMD is kind of ugly in low-res mode, and I am willing to step in and help actually transition, but I don't know what's the current status and plan.
>
> Thanks,
> FX 

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