On 29 Mar 2012, at 03:19, Craig T Martin wrote: > Bob, > > I wouldn't be so dismissive of the iPad/iPhone revolution. Clearly the > latter looks to be dominating the smart phone market, despite it's higher > price tag. It wasn't that long ago that experts were dismissive of Apple > overall (or dismissive of mice and the GUI, for that matter). jmol risks > being left behind if it is not adapted to a platform with a growing user > base. I do appreciate that Apple's omitting Java support has made adapting > jmol very challenging, but I would love someone to rise to this challenge - > for my own and for jmol's sake. > > For those of you starting to use iPads in lecture, I do have some > colleagues at UMass who have an acceptable kludge, wherein they mirror their > laptops onto the iPad and then switch to that when they want to use jmol > structures (they can do everything else on the iPad and it is significantly > cheaper than the ThinkPads we used to use - not to mention a lot less buggy). > If anyone is interested, I can point them to my colleagues. But of course > this is not a general solution. > > I don't yet have an iPad personally, but it's on my list of things to buy > next and I have a number of colleagues who are absolutely fanatical. Tomorrow > we go to the Dean to pitch an idea that will involve the purchase of 200 > iPads, for laboratory and evening exam use. The latter would benefit greatly > from jmol adaptation. > > Anyone game to take this on? Bringing jmol out of Java and into HTML5/OpenGL?
Someone else has already noted GLMol, http://webglmol.sourceforge.jp/index-en.html It is produced by Takanori Nakane (not sure if he reads this list) and I did not find it difficult to incorporate into an article (actually Peter Murray-Rust and I call these things datuments) I have just submitted to J Cheminformatics (ask me if you want a "preprint"). OK, it does not actually yet display on an iPad (since for their own reasons Apple have not actually enabled it in IOS yet) but it is expected to as they say any day, as is Android. Takanori is currently working on implementing surfaces (and I point out to him the wonderful jvxl that Bob has created); the list of other capabilities is also quite impressive. ChemDoodle web components too are impressive (as I understand it, its core javascript functionality is open source) although a different model operates here (much of the advanced functionality is actually server side, and hence requires the user to have access to that server, and of course also be in online mode, ie it may eat up into any data plan you might have on eg your iPad). My point is that these alternatives, adopting as they do HTML5 canvas and WebGL, are starting to appear. Whilst they are still years away from the functionality of Jmol, they are going to increasingly make an impact. Let me give one example: if you are following e-books you might appreciate the significance of the press release announcing that ChemDoodle and Inkling have partnered. I am convinced that "books" are now at the end of the induction period in evolutionary terms and they will now break out. Jmol (to my knowledge) has not yet been incorporated into any e-book (epub2, the current open format for these does not support scripting, but epub3, on which Apple based their new ibooks, does), but one can imagine that within a year there will be chemistry text books offering Jmol-style interactivity. Given that the target device is Android/IOS, it seems Jmol will not immediately feature in this revolution. So I agree with the statement above that Jmol risks being left behind. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF email is sponsosred by: Try Windows Azure free for 90 days Click Here http://p.sf.net/sfu/sfd2d-msazure _______________________________________________ Jmol-users mailing list Jmol-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
