ChimeraX Developer Meeting

Attendance: Zach, Eric, Tom, Greg

March 30, 2026

Agenda

• Long PDB identifiers, try beta archive
• PySide, any new bugs?
  • Reduce app size
  • 1.11.1 release tags on GitHub?
• Toolshed reduce query result size.
• Chimera not working with macOS 26, graphics pane positioned over command-line.
• Work in progress reports
• Inside ribbon color?
• Make Chimera end-of-life bug report and registration changes.

---

Discussion

• Long PDB identifiers
  • PDB will switch to pdb_00001xyz 12 character identifiers in July 2027.
  • Eric and Tom attended a webinar for software developers about the change last week.
  • PDB has a beta site with all current PDB entries that is updated at the same time as the production PDB site. They want us to use the beta site to be ready for the new long identifiers.
  • Eric suggests we make ChimeraX use the beta site after the 1.12 release (June 2026).
  • We will also send an email to info@… to see exactly what the plan is for the 8 characters. Will some be digits only, will they start out using only the last 5, will they allow alphabetic characters in position 4 from left that now are restricted to digits 1-9.
  • RCSB REST API calls we use may also be returning 4-character id codes and we will need to also handle the long id codes in returned REST json.

• PySide
  • We decided to revert to PyQt 6.10.2 for the ChimeraX 1.12 June 2026 release due to the numerous PySide crash reports.
  • We need enough time before release to make sure PyQt 6.10.2 is working well.
  • Zach will make the change in the daily build.

• Github 1.11.1 tag
  • Zach will make a 1.11.1 tag for a user who wanted to pull the exact 1.11.1 code to build from source.

• PDF web accessibility
  • Tom Ferrin sent list of PDFs that need remediation.
  • Greg is still trying AI PDF remediation tool.
  • TomG is looking at Chimera tutorial PDFs that can be removed (because html exists) or need remediation (e.g. poster). Will inform Greg of what was done to those and record on Google Sheet.

• Inside ribbon color
  • User requested this on mailing list today.
  • Eric made a ticket and will make the C++ changes.
  • Then Tom will make the rendering changes.
  • Not a high priority, but worth doing, as time permits.

• vizvault.cgl.ucsf.edu no internet
  • Tom Ferrin requesting security exception for vizvault Windows 11 machine.
  • Currently that machine does not have internet access for unknown reasons.

---

Action Items