geomview questions

[mbp]

> 1) Do you have more documentation on geomview?

Geomview is available via Internet ftp from geom.umn.edu.  The
distribution comes with various documentation files in the "doc" and
"man" directories.  In addition, we have just completed a first
version of a comprehensive manual for it, which is not yet part of the
distribution file.  The manual is available for ftp separately in the
file "manual.tar.Z" in the "pub/geomview/pieces" directory.

> 2) Would it be easy to create molecule-objects for geomview
> 	using e.g. balls/spheres for atoms and sticks for bonds?

Yes, this should be pretty easy.  You could use VECT objects for the
sticks and INST's of some round object like a dodecahedron for the
balls.  There is a sample dodecahedron object that comes with geomview
in the file "data/geom/dodec.off".  The following INST represents a
copy of it scaled by a factor of s at position (x,y,z), where s,x,y,z
are numbers:

    INST
    transform
    s 0 0 0
    0 s 0 0
    0 0 s 0
    x y z 1
    geom < dodec.off


See chapter 4 of the manual for more details.

We do have a sphere object but it hasn't been documented yet and I
think small polyhedra might do just as well in your case.

> 3) Is there an extension to run the animation part of geomview
> 	on X-terminals or is the Silicon Graphics console really needed?

You really need an SGI to get smooth real-time animation. We have a
version for NeXTs also but it's much slower.  We are working on an
X version, which will also be slow, but it won't be ready for some time.

--Mark Phillips