[Treebase-devel] Mesquite and trees without translation tables

[William H. P. <pi...@tr...>]

Dear David and Wayne,

As you know, TreeBASE is using a headless version of Mesquite to parse  
all incoming data.

I've noticed that although Mesquite is happy parsing a tree with a  
translation table (but without a taxon block), for some reason it  
doesn't like trees that lack a translation table and a taxon block.

For these tree files (e.g. the default tree file produced by MrBayes  
-- see attached), I get the following message:

A block of trees has been read for which no corresponding block of  
taxa has been found, and no block of taxa could be created for it.  If  
you had expected that the trees would have applied to an existing  
block of taxa, it is possible that the taxa no longer correspond  
because of changes in names or in which taxa are included.

However, if a translation table exists, I get the following message --  
which is similar, but has a much happier outcome (i.e., the tree gets  
parsed):

A block of trees has been read for which no corresponding block of  
taxa is available;  a new block of taxa has been created for it.  If  
you had expected that the trees would have applied to an existing  
block of taxa, it is possible that the taxa no longer correspond  
because of changes in names or in which taxa are included.

How is it that in one case a new block of taxa is created, but in the  
other case "no block" could be created?

Is there a workaround (e.g. a preferences flag?) that we can use so  
that Mesquite will parse MrBayes tree files without taxon blocks?

thanks,

Bill