[chimera-dev] Auto-start extension in the Chimera

[Eric Pettersen]

Hi Yuhong,
	That’s great that you’re developing an extension for your MAINMAST program.  Should be very useful!
	To get your extension to show up in the menus you need to do a couple of things.  First, your extension needs a ‘ChimeraExtension.py’ file to tell Chimera the extension name, what menu category to put it in, exactly how to start it, etc.  The file is described in the “Working with the Chimera Extension Manager” link found on this page: https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ProgrammersGuide/Examples/index.html <https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ProgrammersGuide/Examples/index.html> (also reachable in the Chimera menus as Tools→Additional Tools→Create your own plugin/extension…).
	The other thing to do is to tell Chimera where your extension is located.  You do that by going to Favorites→Add to Favorites/Toolbar… and in the “Third-party plugin locations” area click “Add…” to specify the directory above your plugin directory (i.e. if you had multiple plugins, the directory containing them, not the plugin folder itself).  Then click Save at the bottom of the dialog.  All users of your plugin would need to do this part.
	When you feel your plugin is “ready for primetime”, let us know and we’ll list it on our "Chimera Plug-ins on the Web” page (which is viewable from Tools→Additional Tools→More Chimera plugins…).

—Eric

	Eric Pettersen
	UCSF Computer Graphics Lab


> On Jan 11, 2019, at 12:47 AM, Yuhong Zha <zha0 at purdue.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear Sir or Madam,
> 
> This is Yuhong Zha from the Kihara Bioinformatics Laboratory. We are currently developing a Chimera extension to implement our MAINMAST algorithm. However, we encountered a problem of how to automatically start our extension when opening the Chimera. Now we have to go to IDLE and manually type "import our_extension.gui" to import our extension. Is there a way in the Chimera that could allow us to automatically open the extension every time we start the Chimera? Our current Chimera version is UCSF Chimera, production version 1.12 .
> 
> If there is any question regarding our extension, please let me know! For more information about our lab, here is the link to our website: http://www.kiharalab.org/index.php <http://www.kiharalab.org/index.php>.
> Kihara Bioinformatics Laboratory, Purdue University <http://www.kiharalab.org/index.php>
> www.kiharalab.org <http://www.kiharalab.org/>
> Area of Research Dr. Daisuke Kihara Principal Investigator. Our research interests lie in the area of bioinformatics. We employ computational methods to elucidate intertwined relationships between protein/gene sequences, structure, function, interactions, genome, and pathways.
> 
> 
> Thank you in advance for your help and looking forward to your reply!
> 
> Best,
> Yuhong Zha,
> Kihara Bioinformatics Laboratory,
> Department of Biological & Computer Science at Purdue University
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