The X-ray vision is a good idea, and would be useful in thinking about interfaces as well as surfaces. But I can imagine some situations where 'x-ray' would be problematic- you would lose some sense of depth if the green silhouette was always visible as you rotated a model, and multiple selections would get messy. If transparency is the problem here, would it be easier to make selections visible through a surface regardless of transparency, but not visible through other objects (i.e., ribbons and bonds underlying the surface and other models in front of the selection would conceal the green outline)?

Also, I'm not advocating a permanent increase in the thickness of the selection outline- I want control over it, so I can thicken it for presentations to large audiences.

Dan

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Tom Goddard <goddard@sonic.net> wrote:
Hi Daniel,

  Looking at the code I think it would not  be too hard to thicken the green selection outline.  We can test the appearance with a one line modification of the C++ code.  I've added this to the feature request list.

    http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/trac/chimera/wiki/requests

The fact that selected objects don't show a green outline when they are under a transparent surface is bug 7777 reported over a year ago.

    http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/trac/chimera/ticket/7777

The technical problem is that the depth buffer is being written when drawing transparent surfaces.  This is needed for one-layer transparent surfaces (the default for molecular surfaces) but is not required for multi-layer transparent surfaces (the default a few years ago).  Even for multi-layer transparent surfaces it is desirable to write the depth buffer when multiple transparent models are used to minimize incorrect transparent object rendering (depth order wrong).

  Here's one idea for a solution.  Green selection outlines could be shown even for objects hidden behind opaque surfaces and models.  It would be like x-ray vision.  I think this may be nice because when selected items are not seen because they are covered it is hard to know what is selected.  But it may be confusing to see these x-ray silhouettes -- would have to try to know.  I think it is easy to try.

    Tom

Hi everyone,
Two requests that would help with interactive demonstrations to large audiences:
In preferences/background, the selection mode can be "fill" or "outline". Is it possible to add a line-width option for outline? I want to increase the thickness of a selection outline to make it easier for my students to see when I'm projecting an image, but I don't want to use the fill option and lose residue color information.

I suspect that's an easy fix, but this one might be more difficult:
Transparent surfaces are very informative when combined with underlying ribbons or stick representations of atoms. But if a residue is visible beneath a transparent surface, selecting it (via the command line) does not show the selection outline. Is it possible to make that work?
Thanks,
Dan

--
____________________________

Daniel Gurnon, Ph. D.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135

p: 765-658-6279
e: danielgurnon@depauw.edu

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--
____________________________

Daniel Gurnon, Ph. D.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135

p: 765-658-6279
e: danielgurnon@depauw.edu