Subject: Re: CCL:Java chemistry applets?

From: [email-masked] (Rzepa, Henry)
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 22:19:08 +0000

>I've been looking at java for chemical (and other) applications. Both the
>potential and the limitations are surprising in the current incarnation.
>We're going to need some ports of the Solaris- and NT- specific implementations
>to other platforms before java/HotJava starts to take off; the insanely
>Sparc/Solaris-specific prototype was a big turn-off for me. I got the code,
>and the accompanying material in effect "dares you" to port it.
>
>Another big question was - why invent a new language for this purpose; why
>not use (for example) Safe-Tcl?

Another consideration will be to establish standards. What we do not
need is many and perhaps competing applets for say visualising molecules,
or their orbitals etc etc. Thus there must be around 20-50 molecular
viewers of various sorts out there as stand alone applications, and
heaven forbid we get similar proliferation of Java applets.

Dr Henry Rzepa, Department Chemistry, Imperial College, London, SW7 2AY.
Tel:  +44 171 594 5774. Fax: +44 171 594 5804.    E-mail: [email-masked]
URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/                Sent using Eudora Pro
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