VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri Oct 28 2016 - 21:35:00 CDT

Hi,
  The file browser has changed for VMD 1.9.3 due to problems that
have cropped up sporadically since MacOS X Yosemite came out,
where the native MacOS file browser interferes with the OpenGL
state in such a way that the VMD FLTK-based OpenGL window doesn't recover,
making the program unusable. The previous beta build I posted set
VMD to use an FLTK-based file browser window, but as you point out it
is markedly different from what Mac users are accustomed to.

For beta4 and likely for the VMD 1.9.3 release, I'm changing the code
to instead launch a Tk-based file browser which is still not like the
native browser, but is more similar than the FLTK browser of the previous
beta versions was. I don't expect your shortcut links to work with that
browser either, unfortunately. I expect that it will be possible to revert
VMD to using the native MacOS X file browser after we find a final solution
to the OpenGL interference problem I have described, but due to time
constraints this will be done in a minor VMD version update subsequent
to VMD 1.9.3.

For users that currently happen to have Macs where VMD still works fine
with the native MacOS X file browser, I can tell such users how to
force VMD to use the native file browser even with VMD 1.9.3, but I note
that if such a machine is later updated to one of the MacOS X versions
that has problems you'll need to disable it again. All it takes to
switch VMD among the three different file browser variants is to edit
a VMD startup script, so I'm happy to tell adventurous users how to do this.

Cheers,
  John

On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 12:51:59PM +1100, M K wrote:
> I have recently installed VMD 1.9.3. It is great. However, I found the new
> "Choose a molecule file" very difficult to work with. It is different from
> normal windows of Mac and I do not have access to my shortcut folders. It
> makes locating the files time consuming.
> Is there anyway we can change this?
> Thanks
> [1]Inline image 1
>
> References
>
> Visible links 

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