Joseph Felsenstein forwarded a question to me that was asked to this list,
about printing trees with a Macintosh.
I don't quite understand what's against using a program like Canvas (or even
MacDraw) when a cladogram has to be drawn. Of course, it has to be done on an
ad hoc basis, but with a little experience it would seem to me a lot faster
(and more flexible) than the solution described in the posting.
Quite acceptable trees can be plotted also with MacClade 2.1. Because this
program is specifically designed for the manipulation of trees, once the
character table has been fed tot the program, an unlimited variety of trees can
be produced in a flash. An added advantage is that the evolution of an
individual character can be traced and eventually drawn in the same plot. The
program is laser writer compatible. A limitation of the present version is that
branches all stand at angles of 90 degrees to each other, producing a somewhat
stereotype look.
The program, written in 1987 by Wayne and David Maddison, is free; you
can obtain a copy by sending $ 8 (inside USA: $6.50) or 4 (resp., 3) diskettes
to dr. W. Maddison, Dept. of Integrative Biology, University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720. You get the disk and a printed manual, and will be informed
when the much more powerful version 3, that currently is in preparation, will
become available.
I just finished the preparation of a precompiled Macintosh version of
Felsenstein's package Phylip 3.3, that also contains programs to draw rooted
and unrooted trees. Because of the availability of MacClade, and because of the
difficulties of interactive Macintosh programming, I treated these particular
programs a bit halfheartedly so I wouldn't recommend precisely these two
programs too strongly (contrary to the other 25 programs of the package), but
at least they are available. (Send me four formatted 800 K diskettes and a
return envelope if you are interested; you'll receive them back with the whole
precompiled package + documentation on disk).
Please direct eventual replies directly to me, as I am not on this list.
Willem N. Ellis
Institute of Taxonomic Zoology
Department Entomology
Plantage Middenlaan 64
1018 DH Amsterdam
The Netherlands
bitnet: a429will at hasara11; internet: Willem_N_Ellis at sara.nl
