[Jmol-developers] moleK: Gesture-based molecular model manipulation using OpenNI and Jmol

[Benn S. <ben...@gm...>]

Hello all,

I posted to this list near the beginning of the summer about developing
a gesture-based control interface to Jmol (a la Molecular Playground
<http://molecularplayground.org/>).  My early attempts in C++ using
Jmol's socket scripting interface got me on the right track and thanks
to Robert Hanson's assistance, the project made steady progress. 
However, headaches arose when I tried to get the project running on
different platforms.

A rewrite in Java resulted in cleaner, more modular code with fewer
dependencies.  I just published this Java port, dubbed moleK
<https://github.com/piedar/moleK>, on github.  It's far from complete,
but I think it provides a good basis.  When we last corresponded Robert
expressed interest in getting this into Jmol, so here I am to ask - how
do I do that?

As it is now, I've embedded a JmolPanel in my app using
org.jmol.api.JmolViewer and I control it with that class's functions,
most commonly with scripting via evalString().  The part of my code that
controls Jmol can be found in moleK.JmolScripter.

One major issue is that adding moleK to Jmol would introduce a
dependency on OpenNI, which hasn't been officially packaged for many
(any?) distributions.  I'm currently experimenting with packaging OpenNI
along with my app, which will hopefully yield me some insight toward
solving this problem.

As I said above, moleK is far from complete but AFAIK it's the only Free
project to link a sensor like the Kinect with a molecular modeler
(Molecular Playground perhaps, but I couldn't find their code).  I've
invested enough time and effort to become quite attached to it and I
think it has the potential to add some useful and interesting
functionality to Jmol.  I begin work on my senior thesis this fall; this
project has piqued my interest in gesture-based interaction and I want
to explore related topics.  My thesis won't be focused on molecular
modeling, but I expect that my research efforts will allow me to
continue improving this project.


Best Regards,

Benn Snyder