Ouch. But a valid criticism. I have always cautioned SeqPup has
bugs, and wasn't ready for those who aren't willing to deal with some
hassles. Results have varied -- some find it a helpful program,
and not as prone to crashing as others do. I'm sorry to hear
that some people find it too crash-prone to be useful.
One of the more frustrating aspects of developing
this program with its current (old) platform-independent framework
is/was the difficulty of tracking down and squashing those frustrating,
often very computer system specific bugs.
That is one main reason I'm now moving it from a C++/NCBI-toolkit
framework to a Java framework. Java programs are easier to make
bug-free, and less likely to have platform-specific problems.
Look for a pre-pre-pre-alpha of the java version soon (it may
in fact be usable w/o crashing, but won't have all the features
of the current c++ version, but may have some new ones).
As an aside on the main topic of this news, it continues to be
goal of SeqPup that it should easily interface w/ other biocomputing apps.
It (as the earlier SeqApp) was one of the first to provide an interface
between clustal, cap, dnaml, and others and a graphic user interface
biosequence editor. This isn't an easy general goal to reach
(esp. for multiple OSes). There may be more promise w/ a Java version,
but it will be a while longer till the easy interfacing aspects are
worked out.
-- Don
P.S., SeqPup is a free, source-included, multi-computer-platform
(Mac/MSWin/XWin) biosequence editor that is found at
ftp://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/molbio/seqpup/
The sometime to be released java version will be found there and in
the ftp://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/molbio/java/ folder also.
Mike Noren (ev-michael at SPAMSTOPnrm.se) wrote:
: SeqPup: Avoid at all cost until the programmer has got the program
: past pre-alpha stage, so that it can actually do something without
: crashing.
--
-- d.gilbert--biocomputing--indiana u--bloomington--gilbertd at bio.indiana.edu
