The vmd_tool is a command line utility that shipped with Iguana 6. This is it’s usage:
Eliots-MBP-2:iNTERFACEWARE-Iguana eliotmuir$ ./vmd_tool --help
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vmd_tool 6.1.4
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Source DateTime: n/a
Source Tag: n/a
Build ID: teamcity-on-catalina/2020-12-01_12-32-17.build_iguana_6_1_4
Usage:
./vmd_tool [--toxml] [--tobinary] [--overwrite] [--outdir output directory] [--extension extension of the output files (default is .vmd)] source(s)
source(s) - source file(s) - one or more wildcards
Known flags:
--toxml convert vmds to xml
--tobinary convert vmds to binary
--overwrite overwrite existing files in output directory
--outdir Directory where resulting vmds will be stored (default
is the current directory). Requires argument output
directory.
--extension Requires argument extension of the output files
(default is .vmd).
Please specify some files to convert - one or more path+wildcard(s)
Example:
vmd_tool --toxml --outdir C:\xml_vmds c:\interface1\*.vmd C:\interface2\*.vmd
The tool can be used to convert from the original older binary format of VMD file into the XML format. With Iguana 6 we tried to bias the product to use the XML format because:
They are easier to track changes with - source control systems see differences in text based formats much more easily than binary formats.
XML is much easier to parse and understand than a proprietary binary format.
By proprietary we mean this format was unique to iNTERFACEWARE - it wasn’t using an industry standard format that could be easily read by other tools.
You could also also convert vmd files by loading them and saving them in Chameleon but having a command line tool like vmd_tool is much easier for programmatically translating many vmd files.
This is only a problem with old legacy channels in Iguana 6 that use vmd files - the vmd files used in the translator were automatically converted to XML.