From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 15 2005 - 11:24:07 CST

Axel, Dan,
  At present, the implementation of the VMD mouse code will not
allow you to change the mouse mode while a pick is in-progress,
which is why you're getting the error message you're seeing.

In order to avoid this, we'll either need to find a way to trigger
the 'mouse mode 0' command after the picking is complete, or change
the VMD callback code so that it's safe for you to issue the mouse mode
command within the callback you've registered on vmd_pick_atom. I'm not
sure what method is more expedient presently as I haven't messed with the
mouse code in quite a long time. I'll let you know if I come up with a nice
solution for this.

By the way, you can use strings for the mouse modes rather than integers:
  mouse mode rotate
  mouse mode translate
  mouse mode scale
  mouse mode light 1
  mouse mode pick 2
  mouse mode user

You can also disable the default "mouse rocking" behavior of VMD on/off
like this:
  mouse rocking off

There's also a "mouse callback" command that enables real-time reporting
of the atoms that are nearest the mouse pointer, which is used with the
vmd_pick_atom_silent and vmd_pick_mol_silent callbacks:
  mouse callback on

Enjoy,
  John

On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 02:33:13PM -0500, Axel Kohlmeyer wrote:
>
> hi,
>
> is there a simple way to turn off picking mode
> from _inside_ a picking mode tracing function?
>
> please have a look at the attached scriptlet.
> after two atoms have been picked it should
> go back to rotation (mouse mode 0), but i get
> get 'illegal mouse mode 0 -1' instead and
> picking mode stays active.
>
> for my current purposes, i can work around this,
> but i'd like to know, whether this is a pricipal
> problem or just bad script design.
>
> btw: this happens with vmd-1.8.3 and vmd-1.8.4-beta1.
>
> thanks,
> axel.
>
> --
> =======================================================================
> Axel Kohlmeyer akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu http://www.cmm.upenn.edu
> Center for Molecular Modeling -- University of Pennsylvania
> Department of Chemistry, 231 S.34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6323
> tel: 1-215-898-1582, fax: 1-215-573-6233, office-tel: 1-215-898-5425
> =======================================================================
> If you make something idiot-proof, the universe creates a better idiot.

-- 
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