Fewer selection outlines

[scooter@…]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Scooter Morris
Subject: Strange stippling in Chimera X
Date: October 15, 2016 at 11:30:39 AM PDT
To: Chimera Staff

Hi all,

I just noticed something strange and think we should count this as a bug, but I wanted to check. If I have a surface, and select the atoms covered by that surface, I get the green outline of the entire surface. This makes sense. Now, if I rotate the structure such that a ribbon that is *not* selected is moved in front of the surface, it gets the green stippling also. I understand why this happens, but it really, really, makes it look like the ribbon is selected also....

-- scooter

[Tom Goddard]

The green selection outlines are shown at all boundaries between selected and unselected objects. As you observe this leads to some confusing appearance, for example, if an unselected water molecule passes in front of a selected surface a green outline appears around the water making it appear selected. The behavior we want is that green outlines only appear at the boundary between selected objects and unselected objects that are behind the selected object. This is a little harder to implement — the current code doesn’t know about the depth (z position) of the selection outline, and what we want will need that. It is probably one day’s work.

[Tom Goddard]

The outlines are working in a predictable if not ideal way. No users have noted the problem in the 4 years since this ticket was made. Still it would be nice to improve the behavior. Reclassifying as an enhancement.