VMD-L Mailing List

From: Ajasja Ljubetič (ajasja.ljubetic_at_gmail.com)
Date: Wed Mar 25 2015 - 05:03:52 CDT

Hi!

One could argue that people using VMD should know at least the basics of
using a computer.
(But then perhaps by the same argument one could say that people using VMD
should know how to use linux, which would have stopped many people
(including me) from getting started with VMD).

So I agree that it's advantageous for VMD to be accessible to the widest
possible audience.
In fact you would not need a separate version of .vmdrc (which could
complicate the build process)

just using:

if {$tcl_platform(platform) == "windows"} {
  cd %USERPROFILE% }

should do the trick.

Best regards,
Ajasja Ljubetič

On 25 March 2015 at 10:33, Pawel Kedzierski <pawel.kedzierski_at_pwr.edu.pl>
wrote:

> W dniu 25.03.2015 o 10:12, Ashar Malik pisze:
>
> If the install path is changed during setup ... And the installation done
> somewhere else, the rights issue does not come up.
>
> Yes, provided that the user knows a priori he or she needs to workaround a
> problem. Most do default install.
> And even then it shouldn't hurt to start in user folder by default -
> changing this is easy for those more experienced users and without the
> permission issue.
> The proposed change will benefit all beginners.
> Pawel
>
>
> On Mar 25, 2015 10:06 PM, "Pawel Kedzierski" <pawel.kedzierski_at_pwr.edu.pl>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear VMD developers and users,
>>
>> I see on the vmd-l list and among my students that the default settings
>> of VMD on Windows OS are troublesome for many users. The problem is that
>> the working folder of VMD is its install folder (within "Program Files" or
>> "Program Files (x86)") which is guarded by the OS. If one tries to save a
>> file there, it is saved in hidden user folder and while it shows up in
>> Explorer, the VMD plugins are not able to find it.
>>
>> Many times a "solution" found on the web and on vmd-l list is an advice
>> to run VMD as administrator, which is a bad idea.
>>
>> I have tested that appending a single line to the end of vmd.rc in the
>> VMD installation prevents such problems, and it seems to me a general way:
>>
>> cd %USERPROFILE%
>>
>> However, for non-power users of Windows, editing the global vmd.rc file
>> is not trivial:
>> * the file is guarded by the OS too, due to location in system folder.
>> * as the file has Unix format, Notepad will concatenate all lines
>> effectively destroying it;
>>
>> For users, the simplest solution may be to run Wordpad as administrator
>> to make this change, but still this tend to be confusing one must know how
>> to "show all files" at opening and then to save with original name and text
>> format, but neither with ".txt" appended, nor even worse, converted to
>> document format.
>>
>> This is why I think that a better solution would be if the vmd.rc on
>> Windows would be installed with this fix included. And possibly also
>> converted to Windows text format.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Pawel
>>
>>
>