Henry, I think there has to be a balance between allowing new features and
preserving the integrity of the initial publication. The nightmare of some
upgrade breaking a published work is disturbing. An author has published
what they published. I'm not sure it would be appropriate to automatically
add new functionality to that.
However, the new Jmol.js allows for "customized" upgrades. That is, if a
developer/publisher/author uses the newer Jmol.js, then any (knowledgeable)
user can substitute in any signed Jmol jar file using the ?JMOLJAR=.....
option and bring the original work up to the latest capabilities. This of
course is a compromise, as it requires some knowledge on the user's part or
some additional work on the publisher's part, but it does make for an
interesting option.
Bob
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 3:14 AM, Rzepa, Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Egon has just posted download statistics for Jmol to the users list.
>
> I suspect Jmol has been embedded in 100s, if not 1000s (or even 10Ks
> worth) of journal pages. I also suspect that there must be a very wide
> spread of versions in that embedding, possibly going back to Jmol 10 and
> even earlier. My experience is that Jmol has excellent backward
> compatibility, and that there is a high probability that the most recent
> Jmol is likely to work with many of these "legacy" sites.
>
> However, all the journals where Jmol is embedded have no sensible
> mechanism of any kind to "update" the Jmol on their servers, if they should
> wish to do so. The advantages would be that even old pages (ie 5+ years
> old?) would gain new features (we assume nothing breaks, perhaps a dangerous
> assumption?). I am having difficulty envisaging any sensible update
> mechanism which could be implemented, but at very least, I wonder whether
> Jmol could have some sort of alerting mechanism indicating what the version
> being used is vs what the latest released version might be? I agree such
> an alert is not so much for the benefit of the reader, but of the
> administrator who manages the relevant page. Much modern software does this,
> and some even highly automates the process of updating itself (armed of
> course with suitable authentication). I dont think those mechanisms could
> be applied to eg Web servers, but perhaps someone might know of any
> developments in this area?
>
> Has anyone actively maintained any sort of list which details what
> features might have been once supported, but no longer work at all?
> --
>
> Henry Rzepa.
> +44 (020) 7594 5774 (Voice); http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/rzepa.xrdf(FOAF)
> http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College London,
> SW7 2AZ, UK.
>
> (Voracious anti-spam filter in operation for received email.
> If expected reply not received, please phone/fax).
>
>
>
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--
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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