[Chimera-users] Session management suggestions

[Thomas Goddard]

Matt Dougherty sent 4 session file management suggestions.

   1) Session description text, browsable.
   2) Copying camera positions between sessions.
   3) Session version numbers with matching filename extensions.
   4) Automated checkpoint session saving.

Details below.

	Tom

Matthew Dougherty wrote:
> 1) I frequently have to use a lot of session files in combination with a 
> lot of command files to generate animations.
> 
> One session file might be used with multiple command files.
> 
> I try to pack as much information into the filename as a way to keep it 
> all organized, but this is becoming cumbersome.
> the filenames are becoming cryptic to keep them short; plus I multiple 
> drafts I need to maintain in case the researcher wants to go back to a 
> prior visualization.
> 
> It would be good to have a item in the' File' pull-down-menu to handle 
> summaries or descriptions.
> 
> By activating it, I could type in a paragraph as to what is going on 
> with the session.
> 
> In a bigger picture, it would be good to be able to start chimera, and 
> somehow peruse through these descriptions, but not have to load the 
> session to read the  description.
> 
> 2) many times in an animation project I start with a common session file 
> containing all the data sets in sync, and create multiple derivative 
> session files to handle different aspects of the animation, usually with 
> the unused datasets deleted for a particular animation session for 
> reasons of improving computation speed and loading for a particular 
> animation clip.
> 
> sometimes I would like to move a set of camera positions created in one 
> of the daughter session files to another daughter session file.
> 
>


Matthew Dougherty wrote:
> 1) optional automated versioning.  Sometimes I when I am working on an 
> animation I need to keep the intermediate versions, particularly when I 
> am less certain about what I am doing and the complexity of the session 
> goes up.
> 
> check box somewhere that causes saving to automatically prepend "_V22" 
> before ".py", for version 22 in this example, and _V23 for the next 
> save, etc.
> 
> 2) optional automated checkpoint saving such that the interval time can 
> be set.  sometimes when working on a complex session it get a crash and 
> I have not saved it, so I have lost all my work from the previous save, 
> which could be 1-4 hours.