Hi all, A new Chimera snapshot release (1.2104) is available. As usual, we recommend you download a snapshot release only if you need features not found in the preceding production release (in this case version 1.2065) since snapshot releases don't get the same level of testing as production releases. Also, in this snapshot the Collaboratory feature doesn't work on Windows. That said, here's the major things that are new: GENERAL: local documentation searching added (Help... Search Documentation) nucleic acid ambiguity codes (R = A/G, Y = C/T/U, N = A/C/G/T/U) can be used in subsequence searching (Select...Sequence... and Sequence Panel) new residue attribute "isHet" (whether the residue is in HETATM records in the input PDB file) NEW TOOLS: Attribute Calculator (Utilities) - generate new numerical attributes from existing ones; calculate totals or averages of a given numerical attribute Demo Editor (Demos) - graphical interface for creating demos Movie Recorder (Utilities) - capture image frames from Chimera and assemble them into a movie file Surface Capper (Graphics) - cap surfaces where they intersect a clipping plane (the cap is maintained interactively) Surface Color (Volumes) - color surfaces according to volume data 2D Labels (Graphics) - create arbitrary text labels and place them in 2D [really a preliminary version; will be improved in the production release] TOOL CHANGES: Demos - changes in demo dialog buttons/menu; demo source file format changed to XML (see new Demo Editor); older format can still be played MD Movie (formerly Movie) - added step size option for playing the movie; RMSD map calculation faster; added option to automatically recolor the RMSD map for contrast; new prefix for metafiles ("md:") Multalign Viewer - Region Browser acts upon chosen region(s) (not necessarily the active region) and includes checkboxes to control which is active and which are shown in the sequence window ViewDock - H-bond statistics can be included in the sortable columns of ligand descriptors Volume Viewer - support added for UHBD electrostatic potential (binary only) NEW COMMANDS: movie - capture image frames and assemble them into a movie file; command-line implementation of Movie Recorder writesel - write a parsable text file containing specifications of the currently selected (or unselected) items; command-line implementation of Actions... Write Eric Pettersen UCSF Computer Graphics Lab pett@cgl.ucsf.edu http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu