VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 29 2004 - 16:12:24 CDT

Konrad,

On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 11:02:31PM +0200, hinsen_at_llb.saclay.cea.fr wrote:
> >>How does VMD use the 1024 entries internally? I suppose the first 17
> >>correspond to the 17 named colors. But there must be others that are
> >>used for color scales.
> >
> >VMD uses the 17 main colors for non gradient coloring schemes, and
> >uses the next 1024 for gradient color schemes. At present, the main
>
> Just a moment... there are 1024 in total, split into 17 plus 1024?

There are 1041 total, with 17 used for name-oriented color schemes,
and 1024 used for gradient (color scale) color schemes.

> Worse, it seems that there is nothing left for scripts to play with.
> Any new color assignment can ruin an existing color scale.

This is why I mentioned making VMD accept multiple simultaneous color scales
is on the TODO list. :)

> Wouldn't it be better if VMD did the color management? A script would
> say "give me the closest possible color to the following RGB values".
> Then scripts could share colors with color scales.

This can be done with scripts already, but we could add a built-in command
or proc for this purpose if necessary.

It would be nice to see the use-cases you envision that require the more
sophisticated handling of colors you're asking for, so I have some idea
how it would get used in practice. There may be other ways of dealing
with this beyond using color scales if I saw what you're actually doing.

  John 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
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