[Pipet Devel] Mesquite

[Rick Ree]

I've also tried Mesquite.  IMHO Java is just not all it's cracked up to be
for GUI's, at least on Linux: it just feels sluggish, klunky widgets, and
so on (I think Mesquite uses AWT and not Swing, though).  Has anyone ever
come across a non-trivial Java app where the GUI feels right?  I'd be
interested to know.

Also, while the Maddisons have expressed some interest in open source
(I've asked them about it a couple of times), from what I can tell the
Mesquite environment is pretty closed and restricted, and wedded to Java
(no CORBA, etc).  IMHO it's too bad the core libraries are in Java and not
C (meaning no nice PyGTK interface ;) 

In summary, I think Mesquite was a good idea, but it's not something I
see myself using in the future -- unlike Loci, which has the potential to
be an excellent phylogenetic analysis backbone.

Rick


On Tue, 25 Apr 2000, J.W. Bizzaro wrote:

> Jennifer wrote:
> >
> > I've started playing with a new program targeted to evolutionary
> > biologists, called Mesquite.  Wayne Maddison is one of the authors
> > (UArizona I think).  On first glance, the principals looked similar to
> > LOCI, so I suggested he contact you.  On a second glance, it really
> > parallels LOCI, with the major exception being that Mesquite is written in
> > java.  I don't recall his web page offhand, but if you do a search on
> > Maddison and Mesquite, you should find his page with little trouble.
> [...]
> > After playing a bit more, Mesquite is clearly designed for post-alignment
> > anaysis of sequences :(  Given the file format the authors are using, it
> > would be difficult to change that.
> 
> Gary wrote:
> > 
> > You can find the web page at:
> > 
> > http://spiders.arizona.edu/mesquite/mesquite.html
> > 
> > From my first pass at the documentation, mesquite appears to be an
> > evolulationary analysis development environment.  It provides modules
> > and libraries for phylogenetic manipulation. It has a modular design, so
> > developers can glue generic utilities (charts, data editors, tree
> > manipulators, etc.), and add their own specific functionality, into a
> > specialized application for evolutionary analysis.  It has elements that
> > are similar to Loci/Vsh, but is not quite as abstracted, IMO.
> 
> Jeff
> -- 
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