<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Aug 24, 2010, at 6:57 AM, Arun Prasad Pandurangan wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Dear Chimera Developers Team,<br><br>Would like to know whether its possible to develop a custom application <br>that can be added as a plug-in inside Chimera (For example like the <br>recent program Ringer)? If so, is there any expert advice or tutorials <br>available to develop such a custom application that depends on Chimera? </div></blockquote><br></div><div>Dear Arun,<br><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Definitely it is possible -- one of our design goals was to allow people to do this, and here are some examples of "outside" extensions (developed by others and distributed separately):</div><div><br><a href="http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/plugins/plugins.html">http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/plugins/plugins.html</a><br><br><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>As Darren mentioned in his reply, there is a Chimera Programmer's Guide:</div><div><br><a href="http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ProgrammersGuide/index.html">http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ProgrammersGuide/index.html</a></div><div><br></div><div>The two most pertinent examples there are "Working with the Chimera Extension Manager" and "Adding Command-line Commands". Basically, you organize your extension as a Python module (a folder/directory-based module, not a single file). In the module you need to have a special Python file named ChimeraExtension.py, which Chimera will read at startup and from which you can add your extension as an entry in the Tools menu, a button in the Model Panel, and/or as command-line commands. Almost all the entries in the tools menu are organized this way, so if you look in your Chimera installation* there are many, many ChimeraExtension.py files to use as examples (Aniso/ChimeraExtension.py is one that adds a Tools menu entry and a command-line command in a relatively straightforward fashion; you would still need to look at the basic programmer's examples to know what was going on in that file though).</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Also, you don't have to put your extension in the Chimera installation itself (which is handy when you upgrade to a new release). You can use Favorites->Add to Favorites/Toolbar... to specify additional directories for Chimera to look in for plugins at startup.</div><div><br></div><div>* on Windows, look in <your Chimera app>\share; on Linux in <your Chimera app>/share; on Mac in <Chimera.app>/Contents/Resources/share [use Terminal.app to get there or right-click on Chimera.app in the Finder and choose "Show Package Contents"]</div><div><br></div><div>--Eric</div><div><br></div><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Eric Pettersen</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>UCSF Computer Graphics Lab</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu">http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu</a></font></p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span> </div><br></body></html>