Saving PAUP trees for artistic manipulation

[Harvey E. Ballard, Jr.]

J. Liu wrote:
        I am interested in using Drawgram in PHYLIP to draw trees
generated by PAUP but I can not obtain tree files with branch length from
PAUP (Unix version).

        It would be greatly appreciated if you would like to let me know
the methods to obtain tree files with branch length from PAUP.

---
I wouldn't imagine the UNIX version of PAUP would be different
significantly from the Mac version that we use here at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.  In the Mac version, after a PAUP run, one pulls down
the "Trees" menu and selects "Save Trees".  In the dialog box, one can
check "Save branch lengths" and "Root trees", etc., to be incorporated into
the tree files.  The tree files, however, are saved as PAUP tree files.  I
don't know if PHYLIP will take such files directly.

For my own illustration work for slides and figures with Adobe Illustrator,
I go into the Tree Menu and select "Print Trees", preview the tree of
choice getting the fonts and such approximately right, and in the preview
mode I select "Save as PICT file".  This tree image can be directly
imported into Adobe Illustrator (or Photoshop, for that matter) and is in
exactly the right format for further manipulations--coloring or widening
branches, changing font size or type of the names, etc.

Don't know if this helps, but you might try saving the tree(s) of your
choice as PICT files and checking whether you can import those into your
Drawgram program.  Several tree-viewing programs (not necessarily
graphics/manipulation programs) are available free through a number of web
sites, including Treeview.  But I don't know whether these will give you
what you want either.

For what it's worth....

All my best,
Harvey Ballard

--
Harvey E. Ballard, Jr.
Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin-Madison
132 Birge, 430 Lincoln Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1381
phone: (608) 262-2792 (Rm. 161, Herbarium); fax: (608) 262-7509
e-mail: hballard at students.wisc.edu