VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 20:37:46 CDT

Hi Stef,
  Andrew already mentioned the File->Save State menu for saving a
VMD session, but if you're referring to the ability for a user to
save their favorite VMD settings so that they are _always_ loaded
on startup, by writing to the .vmdrc file automatically, there isn't
a menu item for doing this yet. I've been planning to write a simple
VMD plugin that implemented this feature, but longer term we would like to
implement a full-fledged VMD preferences system. I hope to have a
rudimentary "VMD startup preferences" plugin written before we
release VMD 1.8.2, as well as a GUI interface for the
'solvate', 'membrane', and 'autoionize' structure building
plugins (which I suspect that few VMD users are even aware of yet
since they aren't listed in the GUI..)

Regarding internationalization (i18n for short):
  VMD is currently written using FLTK. The shipping versions of
FLTK don't yet implement a message catalog system for i18n, at least
as far as I'm presently aware. We could concievably make one ourselves,
or replace all of the name strings in the interface with #define VMDGUI_XXX
type macros that you could rewrite in French, Spanish, etc, but that
would probably only be a superficial i18n effort, since all of the
VMD text command language would still be in English, and certainly
since the locale used in our C/C++ code is the "C" locale, which is
essentially English.

Beyond the main VMD interface, there would still be the plugins and
the built-in Tcl and Python interpreters, what would you want them
to do?

I'm not saying its not possible, but as the situation stands currently,
I would not rate a good i18n implementation in VMD as being an easy task.

If this is of significant importance to users we could certainly spend a
day or two looking into what would be required, but if not, I'd rather stay
focused on fixing the other more significant deficiencies we'd like to
see improved in VMD.

Thanks,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Sat, Jul 26, 2003 at 02:55:17AM +0200, Teletcha Stphane wrote:
> Not very important things but those things that help ...
>
> I think it could be an improvement whether it was possible to save vmd's
> preferences from a menu (in file drop-down for example) :
> I know i can put on my own .vmdrc :
> display projection orthographic
> But i think it would be better if i could define settings in the gui
> first, and then save settgins (or as defaults ...)
>
> I've been asked already about the default positionning and size of vmd
> window at startup for instance ...
>
> By the way, it is possible to translate vmd's menu into another
> language, as a native French, i would find it more comfortable, and
> certainly some of my counterparts !!!
>
> Of course i mean in general, not only for French, but if you want a
> translator, i'm your man !
>
> Stef
>
> --
> Teletchéa Stéphane <steletch_at_biomedicale.univ-paris5.fr> 

-- 
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