Hi Lars, We are aware of the bug you have described (adding some directories to the Tools menu causes Chimera to seg fault) and we are in the process of determining the cause of this behavior (it only happens when you add some directories). In the meantime, I can suggest a workaround that will let you run your extension using Chimera's extension interface (i.e. not IDLE !!), which will allow you to access it through the menus, or from a toolbar button, putting it into the Favorites menu, or autostarting it. I'm assuming you're using the latest release, build 1872. If you go to Favorites --> Preferences from the menus, then choose the 'Preferences' category, this will tell you where your preference file is saved. Most likely it will be somewhere like $HOME/.chimera/preferences If you open up this file for editing (it's just a big dictionary), and search for the term 'dirList', it will be a key in a dictionary called 'Tools', and the corresponding value is a list of directories which chimera will look in for extensions. So let's say that your extension is located at: /home/lars/chimeraexts/PocketGraphBrowser , you would add the string '/home/lars/chimeraexts' to that list, so it would look like: 'dirList': ['/home/lars/chimeraexts'], Note that if you did have other directories configured for Chimera to search, this list would have multiple elements: 'dirList': ['/tmp/some/stuff', '/usr/local/other/dir', '/home/lars/chimeraexts'], Please let us know if this solves your problem. --Dan ---------------------------- Daniel Greenblatt UCSF Computer Graphics Lab dan@cgl.ucsf.edu On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Lars Kunert wrote:

Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 12:10:56 +0100 From: Lars Kunert <lkunert@mpi-sb.mpg.de> To: chimera-dev@cgl.ucsf.edu Subject: [chimera-dev] Adding a button to my extension...

Hi!

My application (extension) works fine when execute it within the built-in IDLE.

The python-code basically executes an external program (using "popen" ) and manages communication between the application and chimera through named pipes... (The external Application uses Qt and all my trials to smoothly integrate it by use of a python wrapper have failed...)

Now I want to add an icon to chimera, which should call my extension in the same way I do it in the IDLE.

I did not manage to get the ToolbarButtonPackage working:

the related documentation seems to be completely outdated: ""The example code files and ToolbarButton.tiff must be saved in a directory named ToolbarButtonExtension. To run the example, start chimera, bring up the extension manager (via the Manager... entry in the Extensions menu), select the Directory tab, and Add the directory above the ToolbarButtonExtension directory. A MainChain entry should appear under the Utilities extension category.""

Anyway, the ToolbarButtonExample works, but I can not adapt it to my application. When I add the path within the Favorites/Preferences/Tool - Tab chimera dies...

I include the set of python files I use:

Thanks for your help,

Lars