Introducing Jimp 2

jimp
    \Jimp\, a. [Cf. Gimp, a.] Neat; handsome; elegant. See Gimp.
    Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

Jimp 2 is a free program for visualizing and manipulating molecules. It is being written by Josiah Manson and Charles Edwin Webster under the supervision of Dr. Michael Hall and is funded by the Texas A&M Department of Chemistry and the National Science Foundation under grants: CHE-9800184, CHE-0518078, and CHE-0541587. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

All publications and/or presentations that result from the use of Jimp 2 should contain the following references: Hall, M. B.; Fenske, R. F. Inorg. Chem. 1972, 11, 768-779. Bursten, B. E.; Jensen, J. R.; Fenske, R. F. J. Chem. Phys. 1978, 68, 3320. Manson, J.; Webster, C. E.; Pérez, L. M.; Hall, M. B. http://www.chem.tamu.edu/jimp2/index.html

Programming of Jimp 2 was started in the Summer of 2004 and has been under development throughout the Summer of 2005. We now believe that Jimp 2 has reached a stable form and can be unleashed upon the masses.

Since its predecessor, Jimp 2 was started completely fresh. One of the most basic changes that users will notice is that Jimp 2 has its data organized in a hierarchical tree structure, compared to the layer structure of Jimp. Internally, there are several major changes; one of the bigger changes is that everything is driven by a scripting language (written by one of the authors, Josiah Manson). Scripting allows for tedious tasks to be automated. As well, every action done through the GUI is executed through the scripting language and logged, so it is easy to generate macros and to learn how the scripting works.

Jimp 2 version 091 - May 19, 2006

A new version is out featuring Atom IDs, close confirmation, more natural defaults, and better UFF geometry optimization. UFF will now only change the positions of selected atoms and is more likely not to mess up by setting atom positions to NaN. See the changelog for more details.

Jimp 2 version 089 - January 31, 2006

Porting to alternative operating systems isn't going as smoothly as hoped, but in the mean time there have been a number of major improvements to Jimp 2. The most important changes are probably the ability to set defaults using similar scripting syntax as is used when setting properties, and a whole new object type that stores a view and is represented by a little camera icon. Currently defualts must be changed by hand by modifying 'autorun.ts'. As always, the change log has more details.

Jimp 2 version 085 - December 22, 2005

The source code has been documented using Doxygen. The documentation has been put in the downloads section, which requires agreeing to the license, because the source code could be extracted from it.

This change isn't directly useful to users except for the implications towards future maintenance. School got in the way of my improving Jimp 2 in the last few months, but once I get back from the break, the problem of porting to other operating systems will be tackled.

Jimp 2 version 084 - October 27, 2005

Now selected atoms can be rotated. A small change, but an important one.

Jimp 2 version 083 - October 17, 2005

Version 083 of Jimp 2 has been released. Now you can draw over bonds to increase their bond order, add hydrogens, and selection of bonds has been fixed.

Jimp 2 version 082 - October 12, 2005

A new version of Jimp 2 has been released. The highlights of this new release are atom drawing and the ablility to find a likely geometry for the molecule through molecular mechanics (UFF). There have been a number of minor updates as well.

Website Launch - August 02, 2005

Jimp 2 has gotten to the point that it is ready for people to start trying it out. If you already registered for "classic" Jimp, your username and password should work for the Jimp 2 download area as well. The license is the same except for the name of the program, and thus how it should be cited as well.