VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 06 2000 - 17:50:42 CDT

Dear VMD-L,
  I have just made VMD 1.5a2 available for download on the
downloads page. This new version has a number of bug fixes,
and new features over previous versions.

With 1.5a2 we plan on discontinuing support for the IRIS GL versions of VMD.
If this is a problem for anyone, please send us a note at vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
and let us know why you want to us keep the IRIS GL version running and
we'll take your input into consideration. If nobody comments on this,
then we will stop building the IRIS GL versions of VMD from here on out.
We would like to drop support for IRIS GL so that we can redesign several
aspects of how VMD does its rendering, which is problematic as long as we
have to continue supporting IRIS GL as well. We value your feedback however,
and would like to know if this would cause problems for anyone.

Now, without further delay, here are the major changes to be found in 1.5a2:

What's new in VMD 1.5a2? (major changes since 1.4)
------------------------
  New Features
    o Support for several Gromacs structure and trajectory file formats:
      - Can read .gro for structure (concatenated multiple-frame .gro
        files are read automatically) (variable precision ASCII format)
      - Can read .g96 for structure (concatenated multiple-frame .g96
        files are read automatically) (fixed high precision ASCII format)
      - Can read .trr for trajectory (full precision, portable binary format)
      - Can read .xtc for trajectory (variable precision, compressed binary
        format)
      - Doesn't support .trj files, or combined run-input files yet, but
        Gromacs users can run trjconv to convert these into one of the
        formats that VMD can read.
    o Windows versions of VMD now write their snapshot images as
      24-bit color Windows Bitmaps (.bmp) files directly.
    o Added the ability to modify the name, type, resname, resid
      chain, and segname of a selection of atoms.

  General Improvements and Bug Fixes
    o Improved the rendering output for Raster3D and Tachyon
    o Major revision of IMD (Interactive MD) features in VMD.
    o The Unix versions of VMD are now built with FLTK instead of XForms,
      this brings both the Unix and Windows versions of VMD to using exactly
      the same GUI, and decreases VMD's code/binary size noticably.
    o New OpenGL code to allow SGI O2s to support stereoscopic display
      with 16-bit depth buffering and and 12-bit color.
    o Fixed quite a few of the outstanding problem reports (bugs)
      that were sent in on previous versions of VMD.
      PRs fixed: 5, 7, 10, 19, 23, 29, 58, 64, 68, 75, 76, 78,
                 79, 81, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 94, 95, 96
    o Rewrote large parts of the VMD display command system.

  User Interface Changes
    o New "Mouse" form which supercedes the old "popup menu" found in
      all of the previous Unix versions of VMD. The Mouse menu is
      identical on both Windows and Unix, unlike the previous versions of
      VMD where the Windows version had no analog to the popup menu. 

-- 
Theoretical Biophysics Group   Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu
Beckman Institute              http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/
University of Illinois         Phone:  (217) 244-3349
405 N. Mathews  Ave              FAX:  (217) 244-6078 
Urbana, IL 61801, USA          Unix Is Good For You!!!