Re: [Jmol-developers] Got it! Jmol and U3D and 3D PDF files

[Robert H. <ha...@st...>]

Warren, please remind me.

Michail, if you can show me how to set a default zoom so that we aren't just
showing the whole protein, I'll try again. But I couldn't figure out how to
do that. In addition, the mechanism for setting a center about which to
rotate the view. So my main problems were:

zoom
center

Bob



On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:08 PM, Michail Vidiassov <ma...@ia...>wrote:

> Dear Robert,
>
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Robert Hanson wrote:
>
> > Before you get too excited, I should point out that I have given up on
> the IDTF/X3D format. The bugs in the PDF implementation are so
> > significant that I don't think anyone could actually use this. The
> documentation for IDTFConverter has major errors, and although finally by
> > looking at the source code for creating IDTF files I was able to work out
> the actual rules, even then I simply could not figure out how to get
> > a zoom setting or anything like a "centered rotation" to work. As I
> recall they actually say in the documentation that there is "no default
> > view" -- which, of course, there is -- it's just that it is different for
> different viewers.
>
> You are right on this default view issue.
> But the only viewer that matters is Adobe Acrobat/Reader and by setting
> additional parameters in PDF (not U3D) or JavaSript you can specify what
> view from U3D is to be picked up as the initial view of the model or
> specify the view parameters without referencing any U3D views.
> The problem is that the views in Adobe products are not exactly the same as
> in U3D
> (have different set of parameters) due to the fact that the viewer, it
> seems, was not developed from the Intel U3D sample sources, but an
> existing product from Right Hemisphere was adopted to display U3D.
> Thus views in Adobe viewers are better controlled with Adobe native
> interfaces (PDF or JS) and not from within U3D.
>
> > I think Warren Delano showed me how the surface business (was that it?)
> in X3D format is flawed. I'm not remembering the details.
>
> That may be a real problem.
> Are you sure that both
>
> - Portable 3D structure Web visualization as embedded PDF from
> xemistry.com
> http://85.214.71.72/pdf3d
>
> and Chemistry, Physics, Research, Mathematics, Misc. part of pdf3d.comgallery
> http://pdf3d.com/gallery.php#P4
>
> do not have examples of required surfaces?
>
> BTW, if you find a reference to your thread with Warren - gimme a link,
> please.
>
> > While all of this could just be due to my incomplete understanding of the
> format, there isn't much help out there to make it easy.
>
> May be once Adobe deeper incorporates its new 3D PDF format, PRC, it will
> document it in more details (there were even noises that it is going to be
> a part of the next PDF standard) and there will be less trial-and-error
> required to determine if, how and to what extent a certain feature is
> implemented in Adobe viewer.
> They certainly _can_ do that since they have bought the developers of PRC
> (while developers of U3D in Intel got dissolved without trace and
>  Right Hemisphere is Adobe competitor).
> BTW., at http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/gallery/ you can see examples of
> opensource experiments with PRC 3D PDF models.
>
>        Sincerely, Michail
>
>
>
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-- 
Robert M. Hanson
Professor of Chemistry
St. Olaf College
1520 St. Olaf Ave.
Northfield, MN 55057
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/hansonr
phone: 507-786-3107


If nature does not answer first what we want,
it is better to take what answer we get.

-- Josiah Willard Gibbs, Lecture XXX, Monday, February 5, 1900