----- Original Message ----- From: Sebastian Lisken <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > In your description of the "Right Hand Rule", is my palm to be > facing > > toward me or away from me. I find that I have to contort my > had to > > follow your rasmol description. > > It doesn't matter where the palm is facing. If you can point towards > X, Y, and Z with thumb, index and middle finger of your right > hand, it is > a right hand system. If you need the left hand, it is left handed. > How the > hand is oriented in relation to your body or anything else is not > significant.In other words, however you rotate a right hand system > as a whole > (as opposed to just rotating one axis or two), it remains a right hand > system. The contortion to orient your palm facing you while keeping fingers splayed is your effort to force a _second_ criterion not inherent in the right-handedness of the system...namely that the 'screen display' is the x-y plane and the coordinate origin is lower-left screen corner. That second criterion is not at all unreasonable and in fact the VRML Consortium and their successor, the Web3D Consortium, specify a Cartesian, right-handed, three-dimensional coordinate system and that, by default, the viewer is positioned along the positive Z-axis so as to look along the -Z direction with +Y-axis up. (A simple Transform node can be used to alter this default projection.) --Phillip Barak ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net is sponsored by: Speed Start Your Linux Apps Now. Build and deploy apps & Web services for Linux with a free DVD software kit from IBM. Click Now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1356&alloc_id=3438&op=click _______________________________________________ Jmol-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
