HTML Revisited

Index to Section 6

Imagemaps

• Drawing/painting Packages
• Image Formats
• Protein Image Libraries

It is straightforward to produce images from most molecular graphics packages, including RasMol and Mage (e.g. use RasMol's Export function on the menu, or the command write GIF <filename>). Annotations can be added to RasMol: label string displays the text string next to the currently selected atom(s).

Drawing/painting Packages

More sophisticated labelling and other manipulations of image files will require drawing/painting software packages.

(The following are not necessarily all freeware/shareware)

• MS-Windows: LView Pro
• Unix: xpaint (tar file), Xfig (line-editor style), xv (image display, manipulation and conversion) XV documentation
• Macs: MacPaint, MacDraw (line-editor style),

The following URL maintained by Lance Ladic at the University of British Columbia Computer Science Department lists Freeware/Shareware Graphics Applications (miscellaneous graphics packages, not just painting/drawing)

Image Formats

Earlier browsers could only interpret GIF (Graphical Interchange Format, compressed) and XBM (bitmap) file types, but more recent versions can also understand JPEG files. JPEGs allow a degree of control over the image quality; of course better quality JPEG files are larger in terms of storage.

The following references are in the archives (Ohio State University) of the comp.compression newsgroup:

• What is JPEG?
• What is this .xxx file type? Where can I find the corresponding compression program?

There are more useful links on references page.

Protein Image Libraries

• Images of space-filling models in CPK colours on the Brookhaven PDB Gopher server -entries often have a GIF image such as in this entry for 2ovo (click here for the image; URLs of the GIFS are of the form

  gopher://pdb.pdb.bnl.gov:70/11/PDB/Entries/.****/****.gif
  

  where **** is the 4-letter code)

• SWISS-3DIMAGE at ExPASy
  • Mirror at Brookhaven PDB
  • SWISS-3DIMAGE directories of images in GIF, JPG and SGI (RGB) formats; and iconized

• Creation of images 'on-the-fly': Molviewer, by Mike Hartshorn and PPS Consultant Glenn Proctor of the Protein Structure Group, University of York, generates a number of different types of representation of an existing PDB structure. Use this WWW Interface to search for a PDB file and produce the image.

  Image of ovomucoid third domain (2ovo) produced by Molviewer server
  
  Click on it for a larger ribbon representation also produced by Molviewer

Last updated 15th Jan '97