VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 21 2000 - 00:19:42 CST

Dear VMD-L,
  I'm happy to announce another update to the pre-release
versions of VMD 1.6. This release is alpha 4, which consists
of a number of general feature improvements, as well as signficant
additions to the evolving Python side of VMD. In this version of
VMD we have eliminated the need for TclX and TkX, by replacing
core functionality in VMD which needed these external libraries
with lighter weight custom routines of our own. This has cut down
the binary sizes of VMD significantly, and should make maintenance,
compiling custom builds, and porting to new systems much less cumbersome.
This will also offset the increase in binary size we expect to see
in versions of VMD which include Python support.

The salient points in VMD 1.6a4 versus VMD 1.5 are:

  New Features
    o Wireframe rendering modes for MSMS and Surf (new control counter on
      the MSMS/Surf rep subforms)
    o New support for Linux on Alpha processors
    o New support for Linux on PowerPC processors
    o New support for generation of RenderMan .RIB files from VMD scenes.
    o New VMD Python scripting interface (developmental stage)
   
  General Improvements and Bug Fixes
    o Windows version of VMD now implements mouse capture so that you can
      drag the mouse outside of the graphics window while doing rotations,
      translations, scaling, and other mouse dragging operations.
    o Improved interactive rendering speed of molecular surfaces by a factor
      of two or more on most platforms.
    o Improved OpenGL materials rendering and gave VMD better looking
      default material properties.
    o Tachyon ray tracer binaries are now packaged along with VMD on all
      supported platforms.
    o Added the ability for Tcl code to capture VMD events as through
      the logfile mechanism, but through a Tcl variable, so that one VMD
      can easily remote control other VMD's through a bit of Tcl sockets code.
    o Significant speed increases for many common VMD commands,
      many commands are 5 to 200 times faster now, using new Tcl 8.x
      interpreter interface.
    o Made it easier to customize size/position of the VMD command window
      on Unix versions of VMD.
    o Improved VMD startup script, now works beter on HP-UX systems
    o No longer built with TclX/TkX, these are now removed from distribution.
    o Trimmed out excess baggage in VMD scripts directory
    o Built with FLTK 1.0.9
    o Built with VRPN 5.01
    o Fixed PRs: 60, 101, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 124

  User Interface Changes
    o New Tcl/Tk based RMSD fit GUI
    o Save state uses a GUI dialog now when possible.
    o The representation browser in the graphics form no longer lists the
      numbers associated with a draw style, to conserve space and improve
      readability.

  User Documentation Updates
    o Updated various sections in User's guide, particularly relating to new
      rendering features, RMSD fit, etc.
    o Started lengthy update to Programmer's guide.
    o Added commit email capability to CVS, may make it an option
      for read-only CVS users as well.

Notes on Linux with DRI:
  Some of you may still experience the "BUG IN DYNAMIC LINKER" problem
in certain revisions of Linux. We are trying to come up with a workaround
for this problem that will not make VMD difficult to compile for end users.
We believe we can solve this problem by statically linking GLU, which
seems to be the most likely candidate for causing this problem, but we
are still working on a good solution. If anyone has further suggestions
on this issue, we're happy to hear what you have to say.

Please send us email if you have problems or questions about the
new version. We are working hard to get VMD 1.6 out the door, but
there are still a number of major items that need completing, so
there is still time for bugs to be fixed if the user community
tells us about them.

Thanks!
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu 

-- 
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