It would be great to be able to enter a PDB code and have the protein molecule magically downloaded from the web. It'd be even better if I could enter the common name of a small molecule, e.g. caffeine, and have it magically downloaded from somehwere (PubChem, for instance).
Noel
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Thanks for adding this to the feature list. (It's already on the TODO on the wiki: http://avogadro.openmolecules.net/wiki/To_Do)
The extension should be fairly easy to handle using Qt's networking connection. What would be really helpful (even without code) is to detail how these extensions should work. For example, I see perhaps 3 possible extensions -- directly open an arbitrary URL, download a PDB or PubChem code, or a general search system. What should the code do for failure? Simply throw up a warning? Or is there a more user-friendly way of handling these issues?
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"directly open an arbitrary URL" -- Would anyone use this? It's easier to save to the desktop and then open from there. I would say this is a hypothetical use case.
"download a PDB or PubChem" -- A must
"general search system" -- would simply be great
"What should the code do for failure? Simply throw up a warning? Or is there a more user-friendly way of handling these issues?" - Well, if the network is down, the boxes shouldn't be available in the first place (ideally). Regarding throwing up a warning, I would not; since the user will probably want to instantly try another PDB code (e.g. it was a typo) or another search, it's better to have feedback within the original dialog, e.g. "searching...", "...not found", rather popping up a message.
There's direct download from a URL or PDB. No PubChem or search yet. Soon. :-)
Done!