OK, there are really three threads here:
1) Jmol app for the iPad
2) Jmol export of iPad-ready model twiddles that can be embedded in iBooks
3) Jmol applet-equivalent for browsers running in Java-challenged platforms
(1) was the discussion I was starting. But now I think that's off track. I
guess I don't know if anyone really is interested in that.
(2) is easy. Otis showed how that is possible, and we could make it
simpler. A Collada exporter is somewhere on my TODO list.
Craig, if I hear what you are saying, you're not so much interested in (1)
or (2). You are interested in a browser-based scriptable applet, (3).
ChemDoodle's experiment is ongoing, and so far it is proving to be
marginally effective, as far as I can tell. It is a hybrid of (2) and (3)
-- a relatively unscriptable twiddlable model for the browser (with
interesting metainformation available from a server).
Regarding (3), I'd need to see real-time molecular surface creation,
calculation of MOs from wave functions, decent translucency, and effective
graphical manipulation of large systems before I would endorse HTML5 as the
way to go in general. So I'm hoping the ChemDoodle experiment will continue
and we will hear more good stuff from them. The idea of porting 7 Mb of
Java code to interpreted JavaScript source, however, is mind numbing.
That's just asking for the impossible, I think, in terms of practical
performance. (Of course, people said that about Jmol being written in Java,
as well...) I'm very interested in hearing more about the practical
limitations of HTML5. I don't know why ChemDoodle was crashing with simple
rendering of large proteins last time I tried it (last summer, I think),
but I will remind those reading this that there is a reason Jmol works so
well, and it is mostly because we do NOT use standard graphical toolkits.
Is that more to the point?
--
Robert M. Hanson
Professor of Chemistry
St. Olaf College
1520 St. Olaf Ave.
Northfield, MN 55057
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/hansonr
phone: 507-786-3107
If nature does not answer first what we want,
it is better to take what answer we get.
-- Josiah Willard Gibbs, Lecture XXX, Monday, February 5, 1900
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