This document has the following sections: INSTALLATION OF RASWIN SCRIPT OPERATION OF SCRIPT SCRIPT SPEED/PACING/TIMING - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - INSTALLATION OF RASWIN SCRIPT Each script consists of a top level script plus many subscripts and some PDB files. It is therefore advisable to install each script in a separate subdirectory. For example, assuming you have installed the RasWin program files in C:\RASWIN, the script PLC1 could be installed in C:\RASWIN\PLC1. To do this, copy the packed file PLC1ZIP.EXE into the desired subdirectory, and then run it as a DOS program at the DOS prompt (which will unpack it). Now run Windows. In Windows, with the RasWin icon selected, select File, Preferences, and change the Working Directory to the one containing the unpacked script files. (If you want access to RasWin's built-in help, you must also copy RASWIN.HLP into the working directory.) If you have several scripts, you may wish to create a separate RasWin icon for each. This would enable you to change scripts smoothly during a lecture, without changing the working directory. With the RasWin icon highlighted, select File, Copy. Now use File, Properties to change the working directory to the one for the script, and the Description (which will appear under the icon) to the script name. Thus you will end up with a script-name-labeled RasWin icon for each script. If you wish, you can even configure the Properties to run the script automatically when the icon is double-clicked. To do this, put '-script plc1.top' after RASWIN.EXE in the Command Line slot of the Properties box. [WARNING: there is a bug in RasWin beta 2.6. Scripts started in this way terminate at the first pause, returning the RasMol> prompt. Therefore, scripts will have to be run manually, with a 'script plc1.top' command in the command window, until this is fixed.] OPERATION OF SCRIPT PLC1.TOP is the top-level script. Start it by typing 'script plc1.top' in the RasWin command line window, then pressing Enter. This script is designed to run unattended. See specific timing instructions for PLC1.TOP at the end of this document. SCRIPT SPEED/PACING/TIMING RasWin32 beta 2.6 (the 32 bit program) is several times faster than RasWin 2.6 (the 16 bit program). To run RASWIN32 you may need a Windows accessory package which is provided free by MicroSoft. For details see: http://www.umass.edu/microbio/rasmol/getras.htm Script execution speed is affected by the speed of your computer, the speed of your graphics card, the screen resolution, and the size of the RasWin graphics window. Starting with a full-screen graphics window, you can speed up execution by reducing the resolution from 1024 x 768 to 800 x 600 to 640 x 480 pixels. This is usually done with a SetRes (or related) icon in the Windows Control Panel. Further increases in speed can be obtained by reducing the size of the graphics window (to less than full-screen). Quick previewing of scripts can be done very quickly in a tiny graphics window. The script PLC1.TOP was designed to run unattended. Since RasMol does not yet have a delay command, it took a while to hit upon a mechanism to insert delays (see file delay1.scr). Unfortunately the lengths of these delays are entirely dependent on the speed of the computer running the script. The delays work well on an 80486/66 megaherz computer running RasWin 2.5, on which the entire script takes about 8 minutes to run. On faster or slower computers the delays may need to be tinkered with by editing the script files (but also consider the strategies mentioned above for fine tuning the overall pace). Also, RasWin32 beta 2.6 is considerably faster than the 16-bit version 2.5 on which the script was developed. -Eric Martz emartz@microbio.umass.edu