VMD-L Mailing List

From: Rob (spamrefuse_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Dec 16 2009 - 01:07:20 CST

Hello,

I raised this issue before, when I started working on the abinit plugin.
Now that I am finalising this plugin for VMD, it is annoying me again.

A plugin can give a list of extensions in a string, separated by "|",
e.g:

"_GEO|*_DEN|*_WFK|*_POT"

The first one in the list ALWAYS appears with a dot in the "Show" field
of the "Choose a molecule file" window as "*._GEO".
There's no way to have VMD not use that dot! Very annoying.

Irronically, only the first one in the list gets a dot, not the next ones
in the list; these appear as "*_DEN", "*_WFK", and "*_POT".
(So fortunately VMD is not consistent with its 'dot' policy ;> ).

Abinit does not produce files with a dot in it.......the rigid "dot"
persistence of VMD is thus very annoying! I can't let the file selector
for abinit default to the common output file "foobar_GEO".

Of course we can force people to write their own wrapper to squeeze
a dot in the abinit output files, but to enforce this DOS-relic by VMD
is rather silly, isn't it?

Why not leave it up to the programmer whether a dot should be added
in the string with the list of extensions?

--------------

Another point of concern I'd like to raise:

The number of entries in the field "Determine file type" has gone over 70.
On my BIG screen in high resolution, it rolls out beyond the screen borders.
I don't think there's anyone who needs all of them on a regular basis.
Therefore it would be much better to make this list configurable PER USER,
so that this list can be modified according to a user configuration file
(e.g. in $HOME/.vmd/ ).

Regards,
Rob.