Editing User:Mglerner (section)

= Check out a new pre-release version of the PyMOL-APBS plugin! =

== New Features ==

I've been working with Jason Vertrees on a new version of the PyMOL-APBS plugin and it's now ready for pre-release. There are several big advantages of the new version:

* It's been tested modern OS X, Windows and Linux systems and fixes several long-standing bugs.
* It allows you to call through to PDB2PQR directly.
* It allows you to show the electric field lines.
* It has two visualization panels to aid in showing multiple potential surfaces at once.
* It defaults to using PDB2PQR for PQR generation and APBS's psize.py for grid sizing/spacing.

I've also upped the default maximum allowed memory since typical users have bigger and faster computers these days.

The main reason that I'm sending this out now is to get bug reports. I think it runs everywhere, but *please* let me know if you have problems with it. Once it's shown to be stable, it'll be included in the next PyMOL release.

A slightly longer list of changes is included below. 

== How to get it ==

There are two ways to get the new plugin

* If you have subversion installed, you can always get the latest version via

<source lang="bash">
svn co https://pymolapbsplugin.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pymolapbsplugin/trunk/pymolapbsplugin
</source>

* You can download it from http://pymolapbsplugin.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/pymolapbsplugin/trunk/src/apbsplugin.py

That should give you a file called apbsplugin.py

Once you have the plugin, you can install it via PyMOL's plugin installer: Plugin --> Manage Plugins --> Install

Note that the plugin will be installed as "APBS Tools2" so that you can continue to use your old version.

== Longer feature list ==

* The ability to call through directly to PDB2PQR
* Visualization of field lines
* More modern apbs input files
* Two visualization panels. It's often quite useful to look at two different electrostatic potentials at once. It's also quite useful to look at electrostatic potentials mapped onto two different surfaces at once. Multiple visualization panels makes this a snap: just set up one surface on panel 1 and another surface on panel 2.
* Defaults to using PDB2PQR for PQR generation and APBS's psize.py for grid sizing/spacing.
* Fixes several bugs that caused crashes on both OS X and Linux systems
* Increased maximum allowed memory
* Switch from os.system to subprocess for running external programs
* Deals with paths on Windows properly
* Gives better diagnostic information so that PyMOL/APBS developers can find bugs more easily
* Lots of internal code cleanup