[Taxacom] Molecular data and synapomorphies

[Karl Magnacca]

On Wed, December 3, 2008 6:56 am, Alan DAvid Forrest wrote:
> FASTA format, to me, was near universal - therefore it is good to
> discover that this is not the case.

It is; it's simply a way of attaching names to sequences in a plain text
file.  Not every program can directly read FASTA files, but the
information can be extracted from any one, which is as universal as you
can get (although I agree that the alignment issue is a problem).  Even
for large multi-sequence datasets, a few steps with find-and-replace in
a word processor can usually convert it to another format.

> I find NEXUS over complex and also have to resort to online
> conversion software, some of which is not very good.

Lines separated by semicolons and begin/end around blocks is too
complex???  Seriously, Nexus is about as simple as you can get.  What on
earth are you expecting to find?

Karl
=====================
Karl Magnacca
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Zoology
Trinity College, Dublin 2
Ireland