[Debian-med-packaging] Someone prepared to package GAMGI (molecular visualisation and editing)

[Carlos Pereira]

Steffen Moeller wrote:

>Carlos Pereira wrote:
>  
>
>>Andreas Tille wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>On Fri, 15 Feb 2008, Steffen Moeller wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>If someone would have an idea on what to change then this would be
>>>>brilliant.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>In the past I was quite lucky when I addressed this kind of issues on
>>>debian-devel list.  Specific knowledge and willingness to help are
>>>a really helpful resource.
>>>
>>>Kind regards
>>>
>>>       Andreas.
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Hi Andreas, Hi Steffen,
>>First of all many thanks for your help on this.
>>
>>1) GAMGI does not compile with Gtk 2!
>>    
>>
>Thank you for your kind and constructive reply, Carlos. I had previosly
>installed the wrong library and had (needlessly as I now know) patched
>your make_path to find that wrong culprit. With a fresh mind on another
>machine it worked like a charm with not a single warning.
>
>gamgi_0.13.1-1_amd64.deb is already existing, -dat and -doc need to wait
>until our friendly american pathologists have solved their case. I'll
>submit this first working core to the debian-med svn later today.
>
>Best,
>
>Steffen
>
>
>  
>
That's great Steffen, thank you very much!

After the compilation, the executable "gamgi" should be running just 
fine. However, to use all the resources, the following two environment 
variables should be set:

1) GAMGI_HELP

to let Gamgi know where are the local documentation files. For example, 
adding a line as this to the ".bashrc" file (pointing to the doc/ 
directory):

GAMGI_HELP=~/gamgi/gamgi/doc; export GAMGI_HELP

To test that this is working fine,  just launch GAMGI and select (in the 
top main menu) for example Text->Create (a dialog pops up), then select 
Help->Current (a Help dialog pops up, explaining the parameters in the 
Text->Create dialog). If the environment variable is not set, Help files 
cannot be found and an error message is produced when Help->Current (or 
other Help option) is selected. In that case the only Help that works is 
Help->Start, which is hard-coded in GAMGI source code (so no matter 
what, users have at least some basic Help guidelines).

2) GAMGI_TEXT

to indicate where are the TrueType fonts distributed with GAMGI. For 
example, adding a line as this to the ".bashrc" file (pointing to the 
fonts/ directory):

GAMGI_TEXT=~/gamgi/gamgi/src/io/fonts; export GAMGI_TEXT

These are the 10 Bitstream Vera fonts comissioned by the Gnome project, 
that can be freely distributed. The fonts/ directory also include the 
Bitstream license file. I am almost sure these 10 files are probably on 
any Linux distribution these days, but the only safe way to guarantee 
that indeed we find them is to distribute them with GAMGI.

To test that this is working fine, just launch gamgi, select 
Text->Create, write "Hello World", select the View page, choose Style = 
Solid and press Ok. A flat green text is now on the screen. To add 
tridimensionality, just select Light->Create and press Ok. You can 
rotate, move, scale the "Hello World" dragging with the 3 buttons of the 
mouse. To get a more refined example, select File->Import and choose the 
file dat/text/keyboard.xml, you should get this image (that again you 
can rotate, move, scale):

http://www.gamgi.org/screenshots/screenshot10_2.html

Together with the two important variables above, GAMGI can also read a 
BROWSER environment variable, although this is just optional, not 
important at all:

3) BROWSER

to let GAMGI know which browser to launch, in case a Browser is 
solicited to read the documentation. For example, adding a line as this 
to the ".bashrc" file:

BROWSER=firefox; export BROWSER

The Help files in GAMGI can be red by GAMGI itself or an external 
browser. Moreover, these files can be red locally (using the information 
provided by the GAMGI_HELP variable, discussed above) or by HTTP 1.1 or 
by anonymous FTP. To test this just select Help->Config, where you can 
choose the Agent (Gamgi, or a Browser), and the Source (local or remote, 
by default http://www.gamgi.org/), and then repeat the test above, with 
Text->Create and Help->Current (Gamgi is working here as a small 
browser, luckly we only have to read our own Help files...).

If Browser is not defined in the environment variable, if users want to 
use a browser to automatically read the documentation, they have to 
select it "by hand" in Help->Config each time they launch Gamgi (or 
define it in a XML file, with users preferences).

If you have questions, jus ask :-)
Carlos