MV manual 
			    version 1.30  (DOS)

I. General

MV is a program to display and print 3 dimensional pictures of molecules 
and atomic structures. It can deal with non-cartesian coordinates and 
performs symmetry operations, so that any crystallographic data can be 
quickly translated to the program's language.

PostScript drawings produced by MV are compatible with EPSF format and
can be imported by most word processors.

MV supports a variety of graphic adapters and requires about 400KB of RAM.

The program first reads a file containing the structure description.
It then displays the coordinate system and lets you select the view
direction with cursor keys.

The structure definition file must be given as the command line parameter:
mv 
The default extension is ".str" (that is, the program will try to append one
if it cannot find the file without extension).


II. Structure file format

The structural data is read from a text file at the program start.
It contains two kinds of command/data units: simple commands fitting in
one line and data block beginning with a block header and ending with
a blank line. Numbers and keywords are separated with spaces or commas.
'*' is used as a comment delimiter (any text following it is ignored). 

The command parser accepts non-ambiguous abbreviations for all commands,
i.e 'sy' stands for 'symmetries' etc. 

 --- The first two lines of the file define the coordinate system
(the unit cell):

a b c
alpha beta gamma

where a,b,c are measured in Angstroms and the angles in degrees.

 --- The atoms positions are given in the 'atoms' block:

atoms
x1 y1 z1 type1 [name1]           * (optional parameters are in brackets)
x2 y2 etc...

where 'type' is used for color and size, and 'name' for bond assignement.
Each atom must have a unique name.
type and name can be up to 6 characters long, empty names are allowed for
atoms which are not bonded.

 --- bond definitions:

bonds
name1 name2 [type1]
name3 name4 [type2]
etc...

'type' is optional, it is used for color assignement, as for atoms.

 --- colors and sizes:

properties
type1 color1 [size1]
type2 color2 [size2]

'color' is a color name and 'size' the atom diameter in Angstroms
(size is without effect on bonds). The default size is zero.

The colors are (VGA):
black, blue, green, cyan, red, magenta, brown, lightgray, darkgray,
lightblue, lightgreen, lightcyan, lightred, lightmagenta, yellow, white.
In the current version the PostScript gray levels are determined by the 
program itself in function of screen colors.



 --- symmetry operations are introduced by the command

symmetries

followed by a list of symmetry transformations. Each symmetry specification
begins with a single letter identifier. Currently 3 types of transformations
are supported (s, m, r):

s ax ay az bx by bz [store]

transforms x to ax*x+bx, y to ay*y+by, z to az*z+bz.

m ax ay az bx by bz [store]

is a reflection about the plane perpendicular to the vector (ax,ay,az)
followed by the translation (bx,by,bz),

r ax ay az bx by bz m [store]

defines a rotation axis (ax,ay,az) of order m (360/m degrees) followed by
the translation (bx,by,bz).

All transformations are applied only to the initial set of atoms/bonds
unless the 'store' keyword is present. This causes the program to put
all new positions created by symmetries back to the input buffer, so 
that the subsequent transformations will act also on these new elements.
In other words, this will make the program generate all products 
of transformations before 'store' with those defined after it. 
For example, if you have a molecule with an inversion center in (x,y,z),
the list of symmetries would begin with

s -1 -1 -1 2x 2y 2z store

(see example files included)

 --- multiple data sets

the command

new

instructs the program to immediately process data from atoms, bonds
and symmetries lists and to reinitialize the corresponding buffers.
('properties' are not initialized and must appear before the 'new' command).
'new' should always be followed by another atoms list.
This feature may be useful when different molecules have different symmetries.

 --- the list of cells to construct is given by:

cells
h1 k1 l1
h2 k2 l2
etc...

The cell 0,0,0 is created by default and does not need to be included.
The current version supports only simple lattice, but other (fc, bc) 
can by constructed declaring the appriopiate translations as symmetry 
operations.



 --- control and display commands

axis ax ay az
center cx cy cz

these commands define the axis and point about which you will rotate
the coordinate system when selecting the view direction.
The default values are: 0 0 1 and 0.5 0.5 0.5 .

frame on
frame off
frame all

selects the cell boundaries to be drawn: 0,0,0 (on), none (off) or all cells.
The default is 'on'.

 --- print setup

pictureframe on
pictureframe off

The clipping limits will appear (on) or not (off). The default is 'on'.

landscape

changes the orientation of the PostScript output to landscape.



 --- other commands

MV performs some optimizations that you may selectively turn off
if you find that processing data takes too much time.

minimize off

will inhibit the search for equivalent atom/bond entries in the display buffer
(produced by redundant symmetry definitions and sometimes difficult to avoid).
This, however, increases the time needed to sort the buffer before
displaying, as well as the size of the PostScript file.

specials off
specials on
specials all    (default)

When a line is crossing the center of an atom it will be split into
two parts. The command selects which 'special' atom positions are considered:
none (off), only lattice nodes (on) or all atoms can be tested (all).

split x

The maximum length of a drawn line is x (in Angstroms). Longer lines
will be split in shorter segments. The default value is 2. If a message
'buffer full' appears, increase this parameter.


 --- limitations  (version 1.30)

atoms list: 300
bonds list: 300
atoms/bonds after symmetries+cells generation: 2500/2500
 


III Viewing and printing

The view direction is selected with four cursor keys, and the distance with 
+ and - . The 'P' command dumps the last displayed picture to a Postscript 
file. 


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
contents of mv130.zip:
	
	mv.exe          executable
	mv.doc		this file
	c60.str		sample files
        cscl.str
	hexa.str
        c60.ps		PostScript file generated by c60.str


mv130.zip may be freely copied and distributed provided the files included
are not modified in any way. All rights are reserved to the author.

If you like this program , a contribution of the order of $10 would be
appreciated. Any comments, suggestions, bug reports etc. are also welcome 
and should be addressed to:

Pawel Wzietek            e-mail:  wzietek@lps.u-psud.fr
32 al. Albert Thomas
91-300 Massy, FRANCE
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