[Chimera-users] weighted distance

[Greg Couch]

On 05/19/2010 02:07 PM, Eric Pettersen wrote:
 > Hi Bala,
 >
 > On May 18, 2010, at 2:04 AM, Bala subramanian wrote:
 >
 >> 1) When i type help(object) in chimera's python shell, it shows the
 >> help message, is there any to way to make the help information to be
 >> displayed in a separate window. I tried in config setting but i
 >> couldnt make it.
 >
 > I don't know of any way to make help() output go elsewhere.
 >

Here's a technique to bring up the help() documention in your web brower:

     (1) start the IDLE tool in chimera
     (2) type into the IDLE dialog:

         import pydoc
         pydoc.gui()

At that point, pydoc brings up a dialog where it says it started up a
web server on your computer and you can "open browser" to browse all of
the builtin chimera and Python documentation.

There are a couple downsides: (1) chimera becomes unresponsive until you
press the "quit serving" button and then chimera exits -- so browse the
documentation with one chimera and program in another, (2) pydoc fails
for some chimera modules, e.g., the important chimera module -- that's a
pydoc bug unfortunately.

     - Greg