[Chimera-users] Chimera --send command

[Thomas Goddard]

Hi Chris,

   There is currently no provision for "chimera --send file" to specify 
which Chimera the file should be sent to.  If multiple Chimera instances 
are running on the same machine as the same user then the instance whose 
main window most recently had the input focus is the one that gets the 
file.  You could exploit that by somehow giving the focus to the 
instance you want before doing the "chimera --send".  This will be 
erratic unless you have a means of setting the focus that is synchronous 
so you can be sure it happened before the "chimera --send" is run. 
Another ugly approach is to run your Chimera instances under different 
user accounts on the same machine.

   The chimera --send implementation uses a socket with a randomly 
assigned port number.  The port number is put into a file on the local 
file system specific to the user.  When "chimera --send" is run it looks 
for that file to get the port number.  There's no provision in the code 
to keep track of multiple Chimera instances listening on different 
ports.  Instead, when a Chimera instance gets the input focus, it 
overwrites the file containing the port number.  This code is in

	chimera/share/DBPuppet/__init__.py

see the portOnTop(), write_webinfo(), remove_webinfo() routines.

   A better design to handle your case would allow you to specify the 
port number when you start a Chimera instance and also when you later 
use chimera --send.

   I guess you are doing interesting stuff with Chimera on a tiled wall. 
  I'd be interested in hearing some details.

	Tom



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Chimera-users] Chimera --send command
From: cdlau at ucsd.edu
To: chimera-users at cgl.ucsf.edu
Date: 7/12/09 7:32 PM

> Hi,
> 
> I am currently running chimera remotely on a computer using "ssh"
> commands.  I have been using the "chimera --send" command to send cmd and
> python scripts to a computer running chimera.  I was wondering if it were
> possible for me to run 2 or more instances of Chimera on a computer and
> control which instance of Chimera the "--send" script is executed by.
> 
> Thanks for your help,
> 
> Chris
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