Notes: Rasmol

Building

This is the part, where the version from this server actually differs most from the original distribution, which only supports a pretty static build of Rasmol for all supported color depths, while the improved version adds flexibility and auto detection capabilities. To build Rasmol one has to change into the [.src] directory and to execute @[.vms]build_all.com.

Color depth

Rasmol contains code to support 8-, 16-, and 32-bit displays. Which type of display is supported is determined during compilation using a C preprocessor statement. The executable produced this way will only work with Xservers supporting this specific color depth, so in case you have to support different types of visual interfaces it might be necessary to build several variants of Rasmol. The following values for this parameter are supported:

ALL (default)

This produces all three supported variants of Rasmol (8-, 16-, 32-bit).

A(,B...)

A coma separated list of colordepths that should be used during the built (e.g. 8,32 will built the 8- and 32-bit variants of Rasmol).

AUTO

In this mode the procedure checks which color depth the currently active X server supports and will built exactly the fitting variant for this server (e.g. if your current server supports a 16-bit depth color display then only Rasmol for 16-bit graphic subsystems will be built).

Note: Auto detection will only work in case your session is connected to an Xserver and the program xdpyinfo is available on the system. This program can be either installed as part of the DECwindows product installation or retrieved from here.

MIT-SHM

To speed-up operations in case Rasmol and the Xserver are running on the same system they may communicate using shared memory in case the Xserver supports the MIT-SHM server extension. The following values for this parameter are supported:

NOMITSHM (default)

Built Rasmol without support for the MIT-SHM mechanism.

MITSHM

Built Rasmol with support for the MIT-SHM mechanism.

AUTO

In this mode the procedure checks it the currently active X server supports MIT-SHM and if the neccessary include files for MIT-SHM are installed on the system. If this is the case Rasmol will be built with MIT-SHM support, else without.

For pre-requisites concerning the AUTO detection please see above.

User Notes

Notes Entry

Comments to: Martin P.J. Zinser
Last modified: 20000517