VMD-L Mailing List

From: Christian Leitold (christian.leitold_at_gmail.com)
Date: Tue Jul 14 2015 - 11:07:07 CDT

Hello,

I have recently downloaded VMD 1.9.2 and compiled it from source, as I
would like to make a slight modification to its XYZ reader. In particular,
right now the comment line in each XYZ file / frame is not used ("comment
lines aren't supported by the current version of this plugin."), see:

http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/plugins/molfile/xyzplugin.html

Now, I would like to change that, in order to be able to use information
about the geometry of the simulation box stored in the comment line. As a
first quick and dirty fix, it would suffice to simply write each comment
line from a multi-frame XYZ trajectory file to some temporary helper file.
Unfortunately, I could not get my new version of the plugin to work with
VMD. The source file is located under

plugins/molfile_plugin/src/xyzplugin.c,

and I can compile the plugins without any problems, so that a *.so library
file is created. However, whatever I do, VMD seems to ignore any changes to
the plugin. It _seems_ that even if I remove the original xyzplugin.so from
VMD's global plugin directory, VMD can still read XYZ files and apparently
uses the original version. I would really appreciate any hint how to ensure
my new plugin gets used by VMD.

Kind regards and thanks in advance,
Christian