[ccp4bb]: povscript+

[Tim F <fenn@brandeis.edu>]

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Do you pine for the nice days of molscript 2.1.2, when the input files all
made sense?  Are you struggling with 10 different
imaging/rendering/graphics programs, none of which communicate well with
one another (or as a standalone)?  No more all-nighters to get a nifty
image of both your electron density and model all together in one piece?  
Then this might be the post for you :-)

I'm working on a set of patches for molscript that puts together the
povray output abilities of povscript, the electron density rendering of
bobscript/conscript, the anisotropic ellipsoids (and isotropic spheres) of
rastep, and the originally powerful syntax/lexicon of molscript.  It has
finally reached the stage where it's even usable (though may not be
depending on what you want), and is available in source form as either a
tarball of patches for molscript (tested under RedHat 7.2 and IRIX 6.2),
or as a rpm (no source included) compiled and tested under RedHat 7.2,
gcc-2.96-98 (as it is a patchset to molscript, no binaries are available -
the original molscript source must be obtained through
http://www.avatar.se/molscript).  All information regarding installation,
commands, etc. of "povscript+", as I like to call it, can be found at:

http://www.brandeis.edu/~fenn/povscript

I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?".  PyMol/DINO are
already cruising along, and most have already gotten started with those.  
This was a project to do a few specific tasks, and I happen to like the
simple (yet powerful) semantics of molscript - it just so happened that
this rookie C hacker managed to make something of actual *productive use*.  
I've enjoyed doing this project, and somebody else might enjoy looking at
it and even modifying it for their own needs. Molscript and the povscript+
patches are still small enough to understand, use and modify, and I'm
looking forward to any comments you might have.  Your (C)'s will of course
be left intact, and I'll do my best to Homestead my Noosphere.

(If anyone noticed, a majority of the above is paraphrased from an
original post by a guy called Linus - see:
http://www.li.org/linuxhistory.php)


Credits:

Tim Fenn - electron density rendering, updated povray patches,
anisotropic ellipsoid rendering

Per Kraulis - original Molscript code

Dan Peisach - original povscript code

Ezra Peisach - povscript code, bits of electron density rendering code

Paul Bourke - marching tetrahedra approach to polygonizing a scalar field

Mark Wilson - help with anisotropic ellipsoid mathematics, sample data

-- 
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        Tim Fenn
        fenn@brandeis.edu
        Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center
        Brandeis University, Mail Stop 029
        415 South Street
        Waltham, MA 02454
        Phone:  (781) 736-4942
        FAX:  (781) 736-2405

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