Pim, The up-to-date full capability of Jmol is found in
http://www.stolaf.edu/academics/chemapps/jmol/docs/ This is kept rigorously up to date. So that is definitely the starting point. In addition, the applet has help or help <commandName> from the console, which delivers a segment of this documentation directly to the browser. [[oh, oh. I see this is broken in 11.1.44 :( ... will be fixed for 11.1.45]] This is about as close as we are going to come to a Rasmol-like inline help, and I would argue that it is far superior, at least for the applet. (If someone could show how the application could display HTML from a web page -- perhaps open a browser, for instance -- we could implement this in the application easily enough. In 11.1.43 "help" is ignored in the application, but in 11.1.45 it will at least give the URL.) It is true that there are several pages within http://www.stolaf.edu/academics/chemapps/jmol/docs/examples-11 but all of them are either derived from or referenced in http://www.stolaf.edu/academics/chemapps/jmol/docs/examples-11/new.htm which is supposed to contain discussion of every new feature of Jmol since version 11.0 and http://www.stolaf.edu/academics/chemapps/jmol/docs/examples-11/new0.htm which contains discussion of every new feature of Jmol 11.0 relative to 10.2. >I really think that it would be a good thing for jmol to have a single >clear structure in the documentation. For a versatile program like >this, with the amount of features it currently has, it is very >important to give the users clear access to these features. > > > that's a very good point. >The list of functions in >http://www.stolaf.edu/academics/chemapps/jmol/docs/ is already very >good as a reference, but the lists with interactive examples have the >disadvantage that they mostly show the functions in the new version, >of which there are a lot :) > > can you say that again -- I'm not sure I understand the use of "but" there, and why is this a disadvantage? >I guess it would be useful to have therefore interactive pages with >examples corresponding each of the entries in the reference. > > > Ah, this is built into the documentation (which is Excel-based), but hasn't been worked on for some time. Each entry in the documentation has associated with it as many interactive "popup" examples as one might desire. But admittedly I have not taken the time to include many of these since 11.0. It would be a great service to the community if someone wanted to work on that. These entries can also point to a web page, and we could do more to point to specific entries in new.htm (They are numbered and accessible directly using # in the URL of that page.) >Then, next to the reference, it will be useful to have a page of >interactive examples from the point of view of the user, that wants to >know how-to do this and this? Of course there the reference is not >enough, no new user can know which function-name to look at. The >surface page is an example of such a solution. > >Sorry for the long blurb, but I think it would be an important point >to make sure that all the effort done by the developers doesn't get >lost. Are there already plans to make a more structured documentation >and tutorial? Is there a way to integrate this into the wiki-idea, so >it can be done with the help of user contributions? > > > All we need is a volunteer... :) Bob ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Jmol-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
