MIDAS(1)

NAME

midas - MidasPlus molecular interactive display program

SYNOPSIS

midas [X-options] [-fullscreen] [-nofork] [-nostereo]

[-script script] [-delegate delegate_name]

[session_file|model_file(s)]

DESCRIPTION

Midas is the interactive 3D display program for the MidasPlus molecular modeling system. The program is designed to generate easily manipulated views of large molecules, primarily proteins and nucleic acids. Midas normally starts up in a window, but if the -fullscreen flag is used, then midas will use the entire graphics display on start-up. It can be abbreviated -full.

The -nofork flag tells midas to not go into the background. See the MIME section below for the most common usage.

If stereo will not be used, then it may be advantageous to give the -nostereo option. This tells midas to look for a double-buffered instead of a quad-buffered graphics window, thus saving screen memory for other applications. This only affects systems that support (nondistorted) stereo in a window.

The -script script option lets you specify a command script to be sourced at start-up time.

The -delegate delegate_name option treats standard input and output as a delegate with the given name.

If there is more than one filename specified on the UNIX command line, midas opens the first file as model 0, the second as model 1, etc. (see open in the Command Reference Guide section of the MidasPlus User's Manual). If only one file is given on the UNIX command line, then midas will try to read it as a session file first, and then open it as a model if it is not a session.

Midas also understands the various standard X-application options. See the OPTIONS section of the X(1) manual page for a list of possible options.

Details of midas commands and their syntax can be found in part II of the MidasPlus User's Manual.

MIME

Midas can be used as a MIME viewer for web browsers by adding the line ``chemical/x-pdb; midas -nofork %s'' to your $HOME/.mailcap. See mailcap(4). This will also work with MIME-capable mail programs, such as MediaMail(1).

ENVIRONMENT

MIDASRC

Give an alternate location for the startup file. The default location is /usr/local/midas/resource/midas/midas.rc.

MIDAS_COPY

Use an alternate program instead of lpr -h to output to a printer from the midas copy command.

MODELS

Give an additional directory in which to search for residue templates (these define the connectivity of residues in PDB files).

GROUPS

Give a list (colon-separated) of directories in which to search for chemical groups (user's groups) in addition to the system groups. See the addgrp command for more information.

SHELL

The UNIX shell midas will use to run programs specified with the delegate, pdbrun, run, and system commands.

SEE ALSO

MidasPlus User's Manual, netscape(1), MediaMail(1), mailcap(4), X(1)

AUTHORS

Conrad Huang, Greg Couch, and Thomas Ferrin, UCSF Computer Graphics Laboratory Paul Bash contributed vdw-style surfaces and the addaa, addgrp, swapaa and swapna commands. Countless other contributions from a cast of hundreds.