Subject: Viewmol 2.2.1 has been released.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 22:19:26 +0200

What is Viewmol ?
Viewmol is a graphical front end for computational chemistry programs.
It is able to graphically aid in the generation of molecular structures for
computations and to visualize their results. The program's capabilities
include:
- Building and editing of molecules
- Visualization of the geometry of a molecule
- Tracing of a geometry optimization or a MD trajectory
- Animation of normal vibrations or to show them as arrows
- Drawing of IR, Raman, and inelastic neutron scattering spectra
- Drawing of an MO energy level or density of states diagram
- Drawing of basis functions, molecular orbitals, and electron densities
- Display of forces acting on each atom in a certain configuration
- Drawings generated by Viewmol can be saved as TIFF, HPGL, or
  PostScript files
- Animations of normal modes can be converted to a video file (MPEG),
  e. g. for inclusion into World Wide Web documents (requires additional
  programs available on the Internet)
- Interface to the freeware ray tracing program Rayshade (input
  file generation and use of Rayshade from within Viewmol)
- Input and output in a variety of formats, new formats can be added
  easily by the user
At present Viewmol includes input filters for Discover, DMol/DSolid/DMol3,
Gaussian 9x, Gulp, Mopac, and Turbomole outputs as well as for PDB files.
Structures can be saved as MSI car-files, MDL files, and Turbomole
coordinate files. Viewmol's file format has been added to Babel so that
Babel can serve as an input as well as an output filter for coordinates
making all formats Babel can handle accessible by Viewmol.

What is new in version 2.2.1 ?
- All bugs discovered in version 2.2 have been fixed
- Van der Waals radii (and therefore connectivity) can now be changed
  interactively
- Optimization histories/MD trajectories can now be animated
- improved PDB input filter (courtesy of Andrew Dalke)
- precompiled binaries for OSF1 are back (courtesy of Pablo Vitoria Garcia)
- Viewmol now compiles on Suns (courtesy of Keith Refson)
- Bindings and icons for KDE included (KDE will recognize all file
  types supported by Viewmol, display special icons, and start Viewmol
  on clicking on the icon)
- The Linux version of Viewmol is now also available as RPM

What operating systems does Viewmol run on ?
Viewmol was developed using Linux, but it was also ported (or better
recompiled) on a number of other operating systems. Currently, pre-
compiled binaries are available for Linux (dynamically linked with
Lesstif, statically linked with Motif), AIX, IRIX, and OSF1. The program
should also run on HP-UX, FreeBSD, and SunOS but due to a lack of direct
access to such hardware I couldn't test it.

Where do I get Viewmol ?
Viewmol can be downloaded from the Computational Chemistry List archive
(USA):
- http://server.ccl.net/chemistry/resources/software/SOURCES/C/viewmol/
The source code and the precompiled binaries for Linux will also be
available from Sunsite (USA) or your friendly neighbourhood mirror:
- file://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/graphics/visualization
For the first two sites it may take a few days before the site
administrators have moved the code to the given location.

Jörg-Rüdiger Hill ([email-masked])