g0penMol
Sisältö
 
Tehdyt toimenpiteet

Techies Corner

The purpose of these pages is to help developers to extend gOpenMol and to understand the technological steps taken in the implementation of gOpenMol.

The main user support forum is the gOpenMol discussion group at https://postit.csc.fi/mailman/listinfo/gopenmol/.

Background information

  • Tcl/Tk is version 8.4.11, MesaLib version is 6.2.1, and GLUT is 3.7.1.
  • The source code is included in all versions, but the program libraries needed for Tcl/Tk, Python, GLUT, JPEG, and/or MESA are not.
  • Some of the utility programs are missing for Linux, SGI Irix, Compaq OSF1, and IBM AIX, because they don't compile as such on these platforms.
  • The compressed file contains the programs, various kinds of resources and some data files. The binary plot files (*.plt) can now be used across the plot forms (PC/Linux and DEC machines are little endian machines while the others are big endians).
  • If you want to use the Tool command language (Tcl) goodies I recommend that you visit the official Tcl/Tk Home Page.

To be able to link gOpenMol on your platform you will need the following libraries.

  1. OpenGL library. For more information about the library please look at the web site http://www.opengl.org/. For those machines that do not have the library available the MESA3D library ( http://www.mesa3d.org/) is used.
  2. Tcl/Tk scripting libraries. For more information about the libraries please look at the web site http://www.tcl.tk/.
  3. The OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT), originally written by Mark Kilgard and ported to Win32 (Windows) by Nate Robins.
    Windows: http://www.xmission.com/~nate/glut.html
  4. JPEG library from the Independent JPEG Group ( http://www.ijg.org/): IJG is an informal group that writes and distributes a widely used free library for JPEG image compression. You can find our code and some supporting documentation at ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/. 
  5. Python scripting engine can be used inside gOpenMol. For more information about the libraries please look at the web site http://www.python.org.

Plugins

It is possible to extend gOpenMol using plugins that are implemented through a dll file (Windows) or sharable object (Unix/Linux). The API documentation is available through the API www pages.

Following is a list of plugins available. Kevin J. Boyd has done several plugin modules and he has written a good guide for writing plugins. 

Modules availabe:

  • Module: VRML, outputs ball-and-stick, CPK, and licorice views. Simple stick can be selected, which is a variation of licorice and trajectories with start/stop animation.
    Author: Kevin J. Boyd, University of New Orleans
    Link:
    Status: Included with the program.
  • Module: Filters, are input coordinate filters for binary Chem3D and Spartan data files.
    Author: Kevin Boyd, University of New Orleans
    Link:
    Status: Included with the program.
  • Module: Ball, is a demo on how to implement a plugin that displays a sphere in the gOpenMol graphics window.
    Author: Eero Häkkinen, CSC
    Link: The source code is in the src/plugins/ball directory.
    Status: Included with the program.
  • Module: Plugin to calculate surface areas.
    Author: Kevin Boyd, University of New Orleans
    Link:
    Status: Included with the program.