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- * Jalview - A Sequence Alignment Editor and Viewer (Version 2.5)
- * Copyright (C) 2010 J Procter, AM Waterhouse, G Barton, M Clamp, S Searle
+ * Jalview - A Sequence Alignment Editor and Viewer ($$Version-Rel$$)
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+ *
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<title>Adding Groovy Support to Jalview
</title>
<body>
<h1>
-Adding Groovy Support to Jalview
+Groovy Support in Jalview
</h1>
<p>
-There is currently no scripting language
-extension within Jalview, in part because a
-scripting API has not yet been developed.
-</p>
-<p>It is, however, really easy to embed scripting
-engines like groovy. If groovy is detected on the
-classpath, a new menu entry on the Desktop's Tools
-menu will open the GroovyShell.
+ <a href="http://www.groovy-lang.org">Groovy</a> has been bundled with the Jalview desktop since circa 2012. The program supports interactive execution of groovy scripts via the Groovy Console, and command line execution via the '-groovy' option. The main source for documentation about Groovy in Jalview is the <a href="http://www.jalview.org/help/html/features/groovy.html">online help pages</a>.
</p>
<p>Here are some scripts to get you started:</p>
<ul><li>Getting the title, alignment and first sequence from the current alignFrame<br>
<pre>
-def alf = Jalview.getAlignframes();
+def alf = Jalview.getAlignFrames();
print alf[0].getTitle();
def alignment = alf[0].viewport.alignment;
def seq = alignment.getSequenceAt(0);
</pre>
</li>
</ul>
-<h1>Getting Groovy...</h1>
-<p>
-You need the core groovy jars which include the GroovyShell. The easiest way of doing
-this is to add the groovy-all-*.jar to the lib directory whose path is given in the java.ext.dirs property.</p>
-<p>The is obtained from the <em>embedded</em> directory within the <a
-href="http://dist.codehaus.org/groovy/distributions"/>groovy distribution</a>).
-</p>
<h2>TODO</h2>
<p>
Using Java class methods from Groovy is straightforward, but currently, there isn't a set of easy to use methods for the jalview objects. A Jalview Scripting API needs to be developed to make this easier.</p>