VMD-L Mailing List

From: John R. Kitchin (kitchin_at_che.udel.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 30 2003 - 13:52:00 CDT

Since there has been some traffic on python and vmd, I have been inspired
to ask whether you can open a pipe to vmd and run it by python. I haven't
been able to find any information on how to do this by the manual or by
Google so far.

The question is actually somewhat related to the recent question on
visualization of vibrational modes. We use python to run our quantum
chemistry code, and I have recently written a module that does vibrational
analysis. My present visualization solution generates a python script and
then calls vmd using os.system('vmd -python -e scriptname'). So vmd gets
started up each time a mode is visualized. It would be nice if instead I
could open a pipe to vmd and then tell it what to do from python
(interactively even).

thanks,

j