Begin forwarded message:
> From: Robert Hanson <hans...@stolaf.edu>
> Date: January 24, 2013 4:14:54 PM GMT+02:00
> To: undisclosed-recipients:;
> Subject: Jmol iPad app
>
> Dear Jmol users,
>
> The Jmol iPad app. The obvious next step, right? So, I'd like to start a
> discussion with Jmol users and Jmol page developers.
>
> IF we were to work on an iPad app, what would it take to make it the "killer
> app" that would equal Jmol as the "killer applet."? What is it that makes
> Jmol/JSmol unique as an applet/JavaScript library?
>
> Some ideas:
>
> -- scriptability - One of Jmol's key features is its high-level scripting
> language that lets both web developers and (knowledgeable) web users interact
> with it in ways that Jmol developers ourselves haven't conceptualized.
>
> -- adaptability - Web page developers can put the applet in a context of
> their own choosing, with all sorts of interesting content around the applet
> that makes this particular page for a page visitor a particularly interesting
> and unique interactive experience.
>
> Of these two, the first is probably very easy to implement in a Jmol app.
> What about the second?
>
> My thinking goes like this: There are three groups:
>
> -- Jmol code developers (meaning those of us writing the Java code)
> -- Jmol page developers (those using Jmol for their own creative ends using
> the code and interfaces developed by the Jmol code developers)
> -- Jmol users (those who visit the pages created by the Jmol page developers)
>
> If you think about it, that second category is what makes Jmol unique. There
> are programs out there like pyMol and Mercury, and others that are created by
> code developers and used by users. But what other programs involve the
> middle category? I think of Adobe Flash as something like that. Is that it?
> Jmol is more like Flash than it is like pyMol? Jmol provides the technology
> that page developers can use to design a unique experience for their page's
> visitors. This is what makes Jmol quite different from, say, a JavaScript
> library that allows one to pop up a 3D model on a page and pretty much leaves
> it at that. That's what the combination of controls and high-level scripting
> gets us. Right?
>
> It seems to me, that if a "Jmol app" were to be valuable, it would still
> involve this triad of involvement. Wouldn't it be a waste of time to develop
> "just another molecule viewer" even if it is Jmol? That would be more like
> morphing the Jmol application into an iPad app, not the Jmol applet.
>
> But how would we maintain that middle tier?
>
> One idea: The "Jmol app" by itself does little. But what it does do is
> interact with a cloud-based server (or perhaps any web site?) to pull context
> down and surround the viewer window with that context. So what a "Jmol
> context developer" (I can't think of the analogy in terms of iPad apps,
> because I don't think there is this category yet) would do would be to
> develop an actual web page with an actual computer using a standard browser
> and then through some sort of registered process upload, perhaps, a link to
> that page along with a thumbnail image and a set of searchable keywords or
> abstract. While that page could be viewed on the browser, some version of it
> could also be viewed within the Jmol app. When the Jmol app is opened, it
> would be like getting an index to all the Jmol pages in existence -- those
> adapted to this iPad idea. The user would select the [what? -- applet? (does
> sound about right...)] of choice and off they go. That "applet" would pull
> context from the web, surround the Jmol window with that context, and there
> you have it.
>
> What do you think? Feedback? Suggestions?
>
> Bob
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Robert M. Hanson
> Larson-Anderson Professor of Chemistry
> Chair, Chemistry Department
> St. Olaf College
> Northfield, MN
> http://www.stolaf.edu/people/hansonr
>
>
> 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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