Greetings! As some of you have noticed, PyMOL 1.0 is out (at last!). Though it lacks many of the features and enhancements I had hoped to deliver in the big "1.0", we were long overdue for a major release and so the line was drawn. For those of you new to PyMOL within the past year or so, our software releases are a relatively low-key event: The last thing we want is for everyone to race out and download the latest version, suddenly to discover some horrendous bug right in the middle of orals or a critical corporate presentation. No, no, not that!
Instead, we ask people to gradually ease into new versions at a safe time & place, while reporting any problems that come up so that we can quickly fix the source and builds before too many other folks encounter them. In terms of features, PyMOL 1.0 is not a huge leap beyond the latest 1.0 beta builds, but there were some last minute tweaks, so please do use caution. So far, so good: the 1.0r0 builds appear stable, and current sponsors can download builds from <http://delsci.com/ip>. Non-sponsors are welcome to pull & compile the open-source code from the Subversion repository hosted at SourceForge <http://pymol.sf.net>. Free educational-use-only builds of PyMOL 1.0 will be released in early August, before the start of the fall semester. The other big announcement is the opening of our official documentation site, which has also been in the works for over a year. As opposed to the PyMOL Community Wiki, this read-only resource at <http://delsci.info/dsc> is something you need a paid subscription to access, and it also involves a somewhat tedious email-based registration & login process. I apologize in advance for that inconvenience. However, if your company or institution maintains an entity-wide PyMOL subscription, then we can simply reverse-DNS through your whole domain so that you and all your colleagues can access documentation without logging in, much the same way transparent entity-wide access is granted for scientific journals. By the way, if you are thinking of sponsoring the effort or of renewing an existing subscription, please do look into whether we might all save time & effort by going entity-wide. Processing of individual and/or laboratory subscriptions takes precious time & resources away from development and documentation relative to broader subscriptions. Plus, in addition to saving paperwork, entity-wide subscriptions can potentially benefit a much larger base of users at a much lower per-user cost. So a hearty "thank you" to everyone who has made PyMOL possible over the past 7 years, whether at the individual, laboratory, departmental, corporate, or institutional level. Although I do not have permission to name most PyMOL sponsors, they include many top universities, research institutes, pharmaceutical companies, and biotech giants, as well as a wide assortment of startup companies, laboratories, and individuals. Thanks also to the contributors of various open-source components and capabilities! Together we are all working together to ensure that PyMOL continues to thrive under terms that remain compatible with the open-source code. Enjoy! Cheers, Warren L. DeLano, Ph.D. DeLano Scientific LLC Sponsorship info at http://pymol.org/funding.html
