VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 04 2003 - 10:08:06 CST

Dear Oliver,
  Yes, you can use socket mechanisms to control VMD through the use of a
relatively simple Tcl or Python script. An example of precisely this
type of work is provided in the VMD script library here:
  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/script_library/scripts/vmdcollab/

This script allows you to make two VMD sessions link up and collaborate.
One VMD session acts as a "server" and the other(s) as clients. Any
operations performed by the various connected sessions get mirrored to
the others. One could take this script and modify it to do variations
on this, or to allow more single-directional control, etc, depending on
what you have in mind.

We'll answer your Python interpreter questions separately..

Thanks,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 03:58:54PM +0000, Oliver Beckstein wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Is it possible to 'remote control' vmd by having it monitor a FIFO or a
> socket for python or tcl commands? I would like to use vmd as a 3D viewer
> for another home grown, interactive application. Ideally, my application
> generates data and vmd immediately updates position, orientation etc of
> the molecules and objects that were externally createdp; vmd can be used
> to rotate the scene, change representations etc.
>
> Alternatively, I might be able to implement my application in python and
> run it from within but for this I need a full working python interpreter
> (see my previous post).
>
> Cheers,
> Oliver
>
> --
> Oliver Beckstein * oliver_at_bioch.ox.ac.uk
> http://indigo1.biop.ox.ac.uk/oliver/ 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
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