Re: [Jmol-users] Pop-up documentation not working on Mac

[Frieda R. <fr...@ns...>]

On Aug 20, 2006, at 5:13 AM, David Leader wrote:
>  I've never looked at the Jmol console - thought it was for script  
> entry, but perhaps it gives error feedback too),

Hi David,

The Jmol console gives excellent and abundant feedback following the  
command,
set debugscript on

In this mode, Jmol responds to every command in one way or another.  
Great for debugging long script files.

>
> *The 'java console' was a convenience for pre-OSX Mac users,

So this 'java console' must have been a Mac OS thing... The Java  
console I am using is provided by Java itself, and is accessed by  
using a Java preferences panel, where you can tell Java to open up  
its own console by default when it encounters an applet. The Java  
preferences interface can be opened by going to
Applications/Utilities/Java/J2SE 5.0/Java Preferences

Which brings to mind this question - does anyone know if there a way  
to re-set Java's memory to avoid the "Java.lang out of memory error"  
that results from re-loading a page with an applet many times?

> because on other platforms error messages are generally directed to  
> 'system.out' which is the generic command line - in Windows it  
> would be the DOS command line, in unix it would be the unix command  
> line. It was built in to Netscape and IE5 (I think) as a place for  
> system.out errors and exceptions to go to, and if you had trouble  
> with an applet you could have a look at it to see what had  
> happened. In OSX there was no longer a need for this and it was  
> dropped, much to the initial puzzlement of many of us who were used  
> to it.
>
> As far as Javascript is concerned, there is no mechanism for  
> sending messages to system.out (perhaps for security reasons?) and,  
> as the javascript interpreter is built into the browser,  one is  
> reliant on the browser-maker or third parties building debugging  
> consoles. That's why you'll see different error messages for the  
> same javascript error on different browsers.

Yes, and it seems to me that Firefox provides a terrific js console,  
which usually gives much more specific and helpful error messages  
than Safari's. But I much prefer Safari's implementation of Jmol, so  
I only go to FF when I have an inscrutable js error in Safari's js  
console.

Thanks for all the explaining, always good to supplement my knowledge  
of how Mac OS works.

Frieda

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Frieda Reichsman, PhD
Molecules in Motion
Interactive Molecular Structures
http://www.moleculesinmotion.com

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