From: Axel Kohlmeyer (akohlmey_at_gmail.com)
Date: Fri Sep 25 2009 - 05:14:03 CDT

On Fri, 2009-09-25 at 09:01 +0200, Andreas Wagenmann wrote:

[...]

andreas,

> It would be great if the concept of frames was made more abstract,
> basically serving as a canvas for whatever to display.

this would be convenient, but you have to keep in mind that VMD
is first and foremost a visualization program for atomistic data
and there the current concept has big advantages in being very
efficient for large data sets of classical MD simulations.

thus every change is put under close scrutiny to make sure it doesn't
affect the current degree of efficiency. this is quite challenging,
since at the same time, there is always a need for new features. for
example i have several useful (for some applications) enhancements to
VMD in my personal tree, but they won't make it into the official tree,
unless i find a way so they don't slow down the common code path for
the larger set of applications that don't use these features.

cheers,
   axel.

> Be well,
> Andi
>

-- 
Dr. Axel Kohlmeyer  akohlmey_at_gmail.com 
Institute for Computational Molecular Science
College of Science and Technology
Temple University, Philadelphia PA, USA.