[chimera-dev] _surface.SurfaceModel

[Greg Couch]

On Wed, 11 Feb 2009, Tom Goddard wrote:

>  It is a pain to find the attributes of Chimera Python objects coded in
> C++ since they don't show up with dir().  We look at the C++ headers for
> that.  We have not had the time to better document our programming
> interfaces.

The attributes *do* show up with dir().  And in the IDLE window, you can 
use the help(), ie., help(_surface.SurfaceModel), to find about a chimera 
class and all of its methods and the types of its attributes.  The trick 
with SurfaceModel is to know which module it comes from, but if you create 
a surface and find the instance using chimera.openModels.list(), you can 
use help() on the instance to see what you can do with it.  The C++ 
headers are still useful for any comments they contain, but this mailing 
list is the best resource for filling in any missing information.  And 
I'll agree that we need to document the programming interfaces better.

 	- Greg

P.S. help() works in a Python script given to chimera --nogui too.