Hi Cheng, Actually the ribbon shape has not changed, but a bug in the lighting that made the ribbon look rounder than it really was has been fixed. (see release notes "general changes" http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/relnotes/snapshot.html#general )

You could use Ribbon Style Editor to make something that looks more similar to the old ribbon. I tried making a ribbon style shaped like a football (named "football") and combined that with a ribbon scaling with larger height for helix, sheet, and arrow base (named "fat"). I wasn't very careful drawing the football so you could probably make it better by drawing it more carefully.

I attached a file you could use as your preferences file (although you would then lose your own earlier preferences), or you could text-edit to insert all of the lines in the attached file *except* the top and bottom lines into your existing preferences file. Either way, you should save a copy of your existing preferences file first so you don't lose your settings. Or, you could just make a fatter scaling and football-shaped cross section (style) in Ribbon Style Editor yourself, without using the attached file. If you do use the attached file, you could apply everything with commands:

ribscale fat ribrepr football

Chimera-dev is for programming questions - I'll CC the chimera-users email address since that is more appropriate for this issue, and others on the list may be interested. Best, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco

On Sep 29, 2012, at 3:17 PM, Cheng Wang wrote:

Dear Chimera Team, Hi. The ribbon style in 1.6 version is a little round for helix, while it is really flat in 1.7 version. I want to use v1.7 since several commands are really good for movie making eg. format option and transparency. However the ribbon style for helix is not as nice as it in 1.6. I am wondering how could I change the style of ribbon in 1.7 to be the same as in 1.6 since the ribbon style seams the same in the panel for both versions. Many thanks. Best, Cheng