VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Jun 28 2000 - 15:46:17 CDT

Dear VMD-L,
  We have just made VMD 1.5 available for download on the
VMD downloads page:
    http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Development/Download/download.cgi

Since the release of VMD 1.5b1 we have fixed a number of bugs, improved
the User's guide substantially, and started distributing PDF files
with the distributions instead of raw postscript. Now that
we are distributing PDF files instead of Postscript, all
of our binary distributions include the User's guide, which gets
installed in the "doc" subdirectory of the installed VMD.
This should make life easier when you're running VMD on a laptop
late at night with no network in sight.

We hope that Windows users in particular will find this version
of VMD easier to use, and better documented than the previous
versions. Changes have been made since 1.5b1 which will
help VMD run with much less idle CPU usage than the a1, a2, and b1
versions did. This should prove particularly useful to those
individuals running VMD on machines with less capable graphics hardware.

Here's the short improvements summary from the README:

What's new in VMD 1.5?
----------------------
  New Features
    o Support for several Gromacs structure and trajectory file formats:
      - Can read .gro for structure (concatenated multiple-frame .gro
        files are read automatically) (variable precision ASCII format)
      - Can read .g96 for structure (concatenated multiple-frame .g96
        files are read automatically) (fixed high precision ASCII format)
      - Can read .trr for trajectory (full precision, portable binary format)
      - Can read .xtc for trajectory (variable precision, compressed binary
        format)
      Note: Doesn't support .trj files, or combined run-input files yet, but
            Gromacs users can run trjconv to convert these into one of the
            formats that VMD can read.
    o Windows versions of VMD now write their snapshot images as
      24-bit color Windows Bitmaps (.bmp) files directly.
    o Added the ability to modify the name, type, resname, resid
      chain, and segname of a selection of atoms.
    o Entirely new rendering capabilities implementing "material"
      properties, for user control of ambient, diffuse, and specular
      reflectivity, as well as surface shininess.

  General Improvements and Bug Fixes
    o Improved the rendering output for Raster3D and Tachyon
    o General improvements to all renderer output.
    o Major revision of IMD (Interactive MD) features in VMD.
    o The Unix versions of VMD are now built with FLTK instead of XForms,
      this brings both the Unix and Windows versions of VMD to using exactly
      the same GUI, and decreases VMD's code/binary size noticably.
    o New OpenGL code to allow SGI O2s to support stereoscopic display
      with 16-bit depth buffering and and 12-bit color.
    o Fixed quite a few of the outstanding problem reports (bugs)
      that were sent in on previous versions of VMD.
      PRs fixed: 5, 7, 10, 19, 23, 29, 58, 64, 68, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81,
                 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 104, 105
    o Rewrote large parts of the VMD display command system, yielding
      some significant performance increases.
    o Improvements to VMD's built-in help for various commands, better
      help topic listings.

  User Interface Changes
    o New GUI color scheme, using lighter colors which are easier on most
      people's eyes, particularly with laptops, projectors, etc.
    o New "Mouse" form which supercedes the old "popup menu" found in
      all of the previous Unix versions of VMD. The Mouse menu is
      identical on both Windows and Unix, unlike the previous versions of
      VMD where the Windows version had no analog to the popup menu.
    o New "Materials" form which provides controls over rendering
      properties for representations. (controls for shininess,
      diffuse, ambient and specular reflectivity etc)
    o Renamed the "Mol" and "Sim" forms to their longer names for increased
      intuitiveness to new users.
    o New "Cancel" button on the Molecule form providing the ability to
      cancel loading of very large trajectory files.

  User Documentation Updates
    o Improved HTML version of documentation (new rev of latex2html)
    o Improved PDF version of documentation, now uses better scalable fonts
    o Updated the VMD tutorial to cover new GUI features
    o The user guide does more to cover issues specific to the Windows
      versions of VMD in better detail.
    o Updated docs on rendering to snapshots and to external renderers
    o Many updates to sections explaining the VMD GUI, particularly
      the new GUI features.

We are planning on waiting to announce 1.5 beyond VMD-L for a day
or two so that VMD-L readers can download the new version and give
us any last minute feedback before we open the floodgate to the
rest of the world. We appreciate any comments, questions, or suggestions
that you can give us.

Thanks!!!!
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu 

-- 
Theoretical Biophysics Group   Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu
Beckman Institute              http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/
University of Illinois         Phone:  (217) 244-3349
405 N. Mathews  Ave              FAX:  (217) 244-6078 
Urbana, IL 61801, USA          Unix Is Good For You!!!