Re: [Jmol-users] Jmol/SwingJS and JSmol update

[Otis R. <osr...@gm...>]

It's been a wonderful 8 years. Thanks Bob et al...

--
Otis Rothenberger
chemagic.org

> On Dec 2, 2020, at 12:03 PM, Robert Hanson via Jmol-users <jmo...@li...> wrote:
> 
> 
> Sort of an end-of-year reflection....
> 
> As you probably know, the technology I implemented starting back in the fall of 2012 for converting Jmol/Java to Jmol/JavaScript (aka "JSmol") has done an admirable job of keeping us all in business (mostly a volunteer business, of course). It's been a great ride -- and no, I am not writing to tell you I am done. Not at all. It has been a terrific 8 years, hasn't it? It certainly appears that Jmol/JSmol is alive and well. The week of Oct. 4, we had an all-time record-shattering download count of 5324 copies. And the stats the past two months, with 14,159 downloads in October and 14,273 downloads in November, break all records by a long shot. These numbers are 17% higher than anything we have seen before -- beating the previous record of just over 12,000 downloads for the month of October, 2012 (roughly when I announced JSmol), and approximately doubling the monthly average of 6,389 for the period July 2018 - July 2020.
> 
> So, that is all very satisfying! It is terrific to be part of this thriving community. 
> 
> This past weekend I got InChI integrated into Jmol and JSmol, and that is on its way to release in the next day or so. It is a full implementation in Java and a partial one in JavaScript. I'd still like to be able to use InChI "options" to fully show the power of InChI in JavaScript as well, but unfortunately, it appears that that is harder than it looks. (Or at least it's not obvious to me how to do that.)  In any case, I will need some help with that if we want to fully implement InChI into JSmol. It might involve C programming, or it might just involve a bit of manipulation of the InChI extensions. 
> 
> As you may or may not know, the technology I used for Jmol, now called java2script/SwingJS, has extended this success to a large number of applications beyond Jmol -- involving close to a 1000 applets or applet instances in JavaScript, mostly within the fields of physics and mathematics. And large Java applications have been successful as well. Especially nice to see is that making Java projects "JavaScript-ready" has gotten dramatically easier with additional development. Always a good sign! 
> 
> SwingJS is a vast improvement over the original "j2slib" still being used for what everyone now knows as JSmol. Making that work back in 2012 required extensive reworking of the Jmol code, though. That was a difficult challenge. Now, with SwingJS, there are only minimal changes that have to be done in a working Java program to make it JavaScript-ready. Both processes involve a java2script "transpiler" plugin for Eclipse. But the one we use currently for JSmol is locked in Java 6, and the overall technology just isn't able to be developed any further using it. 
> 
> In contrast, the java2script/SwingJS transpiler supports syntax through Java 11 and includes many of the Java classes that were introduced in Java 7-10. It's robust, well tested, and much more compatible with Java. There's very little that needs changing in any Java program to make that program also usable in JavaScript. So java2script/SwingJS is definitely the way to go for Jmol as well.
> 
> So, what about Jmol-SwingJS (https://github.com/BobHanson/Jmol-SwingJS) aka "Jmol 15"? The answer is that right now it has all the capability and essentially the same code as Jmol 14. Every time I add something to one, I am adding it to both. (Jmol 14 is on Sourceforge; Jmol 15 is on GitHub.) 
> 
> I had put Jmol/SwingJS aside for a while, though, because I thought it would be a big job to get that last 5% working. But yesterday I took another look at it -- spent about 15 hours on it, actually -- and I am quite pleased with what I see. I have the full Jmol application running in JavaScript now, alongside the Jmol "Applet". The application can be run as an independent "floating" frame or as an embedded app within a web page (just like the applet, but with menubar and toolbar). The only real change for the applet is that they both now use the same console -- the one from the Jmol Application. This is a bit of an upgrade for the applet, as it brings to the applet the real-time color-enhanced script parsing as you type.  
> 
> What's missing right now is the collection of "core" compressed packages as well as timing comparisons. Compression is going to be important, as one of the key improvements with SwingJS is that method names are "fully elaborated", as in newMeasurementData$S$javajs_util_Lst. This was huge in making SwingJS applications work smoothly, but it also adds quite a bit of extra bytes to the JavaScript. The result is a larger download (19 MB for all of Jmol-SwingJS code vs. 7.6 MB for the full JSmol code with no compression).
> 
> But the good news is that it is all working, and I suspect working faster, though I don't have data to back up that claim. (The java2script tweaks I used for JSmol were pretty well optimized.) I'm looking forward to making this transition possible. I hope to find time to try out some good compression technology. (The absolutely complete SwingJS package, all told, Java and all, is just over 4000 files and 85 MB, compressing down to 7.6 MB using ZIP. Jmol adds another 20 MB to that.)  So getting this modular and compressed is critical.
> 
> Anyway, that's where we are and, I think, where we are going with Jmol. I hope you will join me for the SwingJS ride.
> 
> Bob
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Robert M. Hanson
> Professor of Chemistry
> St. Olaf College
> Northfield, MN
> http://www.stolaf.edu/people/hansonr
> 
> 
> 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
> 
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