Thanks for the analysis Bob, I need to add in my thoughts. First, as far as open source goes, I don't really believe there is any sense of some "competition". Open source provides tools to the community, each is unique and will be used in unique ways by the community. Some will even use multiple solutions to craft the type of product they are trying to create. Open source solutions are all great. In the open source world, if a tool is not necessary, people will not use it and it will not be developed further. But an open source developer that believes he/she is in some sort of competition with another open source solution has already lost.
That being said, I have been incredibly impressed with JSmol, and I am very excited to see how it grows. The ChemDoodle Web Components are very well funded and used around the world; I don't think that just because I like JSmol, that I should stop developing the ChemDoodle Web Components. There are many reasons to use one or the other or both. For instance, the ChemDoodle Web Components do not require a server to be used and is very small in size and does not have excessive load times. The ChemDoodle Web Components library is also integrated with our ChemDoodle desktop software used by thousands of institutions around the world in over 70 countries. As for the slow development of our WebGL features, this is nothing more than an in-house build up. We have surfaces and labeling and many more things coming. It was announced very recently (from my friend Brandon Jones, who is a WebGL expert at Google) that WebGL is coming to Chrome for Android very soon ( http://blog.tojicode.com/2013/01/get-webgl-working-on-android-chrome-beta.html ). Apple will not let their biggest competitor have more HTML5 support than they do. And really, this is the reason why we have not pursued a 3D renderer in pure <canvas>. And this is the only pointed question I have for you Bob, how do you see the J(S)mol code being sustainable as time goes on? There will be users that want offline desktop support, <canvas> support and WebGL support. Each time you develop a feature, you have to re-implement it twice more or very soon users will get confused as to which version to use. What is your advice on this? I will wrap up by saying I love ChemDoodle and I love JSmol. I think both are brilliant pieces of work and I hope the community benefits from both projects for a very long time to come regardless of the opinions of the people that develop them. Bests, Kevin Theisen President, iChemLabs On Jan 13, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Robert Hanson wrote: > I am comforted by the fact that nothing else comes even close to the sort of > capabilities that we have in JSmol already. The closest I can think of is > ChemDoodle, which has a smaller footprint than JSmol. It was a great early > experiment in the possibilities of HTML5/WebGL, and it may have some > potential, but, at least in my opinion, it is currently quite limited in > providing anything more than 3D "eye candy" to a page. (If that is all the > page needs, and you are happy with the licensing, go for that. You do not > need JSmol.) To my knowledge ChemDoodle's protein visualization is limited to > WebGL, which pretty much means no surfaces and only limited support for > cartoons and such. There is no high-level scripting language as there is in > JSmol, so doing anything of any sophisticated nature at all will require > expertise in JavaScript and a pretty full understanding of the ChemDoodle > model. And it has plenty of limitations with respect to model size, just like > JSmol. Nothing surprising there, I think. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Master Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL, ASP.NET, C# 2012, HTML5, CSS, MVC, Windows 8 Apps, JavaScript and much more. Keep your skills current with LearnDevNow - 3,200 step-by-step video tutorials by Microsoft MVPs and experts. ON SALE this month only -- learn more at: http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnmore_123012 _______________________________________________ Jmol-users mailing list Jmol-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
