Home | All Commands | Notice

Home

RasTop 2.2

Molecular Graphics Visualization Tool

Welcome to RasTop molecular visualization software, Version 2.2.  RasTop is a graphical interface to the program RasMol. RasTop allows the viewing and the direct manipulation of macromolecules and small molecules on screen. RasMol was developed initially by Roger Sayle at the University of Edinburgh's Biocomputing Research Unit and the BioMolecular Structure Department, Glaxo Research and Development, Greenford, U.K.  Many people since contributed to its code. In 1999, Herbert J. Berstein released a compilated version named Rasmol 2.7.1 of different source variants under a GPL-like license (see  NOTICE). Many thanks to these people for giving RasMol freely to the community. Many thanks also to Herbert Berstein, Frances Bernstein, William McClure, Eric Marz, Margaret Wong, and Roger Sayle for their contributions to the Help and giving the permission to re-use their work. See the complete list of contributors to this version in the file copyright.

Please,  visit the library for more links on RasMol.

Everybody is welcome to use RasTop, but you must read and comply with the NOTICE, which contains important disclaimers and information on using, distributing, and contributing to this project. 

If you have any question, suggestions, corrections, or bug reports, please contact us on sourceforge.

About RasTop

Our understanding in biological sciences is progressing rapidly. More and more proteins are discovered everyday, new ways on how they associate in superstructures are elucidated. RasTop was developed with the idea of giving to the scientist, "at the bench", a mean to visualize quickly the tri-dimensional shape of macromolecules. RasTop is also particularly adapted for teaching purpose.

RasTop wraps a user-friendly graphical interface around "RasMol molecular engine". No more typing on the command line, each command in the menu generates its own script that is transferred to RasMol. RasTop has many extensions to handle atom selections: addition and subtraction of atoms, groups, or chains, selection on screen with a lasso, ability to go back to the previous selection, copying to and pasting selections from the clipboard, set operations such as inverse, extraction, summation, subtraction, and exclusion, and a full saving of a work session under a script format called RSM script. 

RasTop allows several molecules to be opened at the same time in the same window and several windows to be opened at the same time.

Recommanded Hardware: Pentium or equivalent processor, 16 MB of RAM, and a web browser to access this site, at best a version 4 or higher.

Operating system: Windows or Linux platform. Linux users need Wine installed.

What's new in RasTop 2.2 ?

RasTop 2.2
Rastop is now distributed on sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/rastop/ to allow the community to participate directly to the development of RasTop at the source level.

RasTop 2.1 - Released June 2004
Numerous bugs have been corrected, thanks for all of you who reported them (see changelog). A command window similar to the one in the original RasMol program has been added. This feature was requested by numerous teachers and was initially developed by Christian Duque. RasTop is now  localizable to multiple languages, see translating RasTop. A 'scripting'  toolbar has been added to improve the handling of scripts. Scripts located in the "rastop/scripts" folder are directly accessible on the new toolbar. Images can be saved as bmp files in 32-bit format.

RasTop 2.0.3 - Released January 2003
Many bugs from the initial 2.0 series have been corrected. Individual preferences are now created for each user. Partial export in POVRay format is now available.

RasTop 2.0 - Released January 2002
This is a major update over previous versions. Next are listed the main modifications:
Interface improvements: New toolbar with direct selection of atom properties and element sets; new buttons to facilitate rendering. The mouse wheel is now active. Information on pointed atoms available in the status bar. Hopefully the program is working without problem on Windows 2000 platforms.
Rendering improvements: Higher color resolution and depth queuing. New cylinder rendering, multidirectional headlight, better cartoon and ribbon rendering, more comprehensive display mode, and complete Richards - Connolly surfaces. Choice of the molecular rendering at start from a default script and preference saving.
Multiple molecule capability: Fully loaded world accepting multiple molecules; saving and restoring of complete worlds with improved world scripting.

RasTop 1.3.1- Released March 2001
This is a minor update with modifications concerning mainly correction of bugs reported for the 1.3 version.  A release for 8-bit monitors is also available. A few systems are missing an updated version of the mfc42.dll file which is also available, but requires separate installation.

RasTop 1.3 - Released August 2000
This is the first release of RasTop. Beside the interface, new rendering capabilities were added to RasMol code: back clipping, 32-bit output under Windows, centering command either on current selection or to the origin, variation of depthcue in slab mode, and ShadePower coloring feature.

Building the source and contributing to RasTop

RasTop 2.1 was built with Visual Studio 6.0. To compile RasTop, just load RasTop workspace and built. Starting version 2.1 the workspace is separated from the source; you'll probably need to adjust VS for action such as search, etc. You can find in the changelog all changes made to RasMol source since RasMol version 2.1 by Roger Sayle. All modifications in the RasMol core (the 'c' files) that are RasTop specific are under the conditioner RASTOPWIN. To compile the 8-bits version, un-define THIRTYTWOBITS and define EIGHTBITS, see rasmol.h.

There is no TODO list attached to RasTop, but potential working directions are numerous. If you are interested in adding to RasTop novel functionalities and take advantage of RasMol license to diffuse your method, please *DO*. If you want to make your own derivative of RasTop, you must read and comply with the full NOTICE.

Translating RasTop

Starting version 2.1, RasTop can be simply translated to others languages. 

To translate the command line add a new dictionary in the folder "rastop/lib" named rastop_yourlang.lang. See the examples rasmol.lang and rasmol_french.lang in the lib folder. To switch the language to your language, type simple "set language yourlang" on the command line. Add this command to the local preferences rasmolprefs in the same folder if you  intend to distribute a localized version of RasTop.

To translate menus and dialogs, translate the string table. You need to recompile RasTop. The string table is editable from inside Visual Studio 6.

Comments and bug reports

If you have any question, suggestion, correction, or bug report, contact us on sourceforge at .

About this Site

RasTop 2.2 package contains a folder named "help." This folder contains a series of html documents plus varied files that together create a web-based document. To view the help site, open a web browser offline, click 'open' in the file menu command, browse your directory, and choose the file 'index.html'. You can also link RasTop directly to this site in the preferences.