I am also interested in a system for trees -- phylogenetic trees for biology and paleontology (evolutionary "family trees"). I plan to build a forum system whereby biologists can click on a node or branch of a tree and hang a threaded discussion from that point. This will facilitate and help focus discussion about specific evolutionary groups. When people are collaborating on a phylogenetic study, it can be difficult to keep straight which part of the tree you are talking about, because not all nodes have taxonomic names. This sort of thing might have use beyond biology? Several tree file formats exist for biology and paleontology. I will have to figure out how to allow a user to upload one of these files, then parse it on the server to produce a "forum tree file" of some sort. Once the tree is uploaded and parsed, I won't worry with letting them modify the tree for this project, although that could be an eventual feature. Great desktop software exists already for interactive tree manipulation and calculation (PAUP, MacClade, Phylip, etc.). I think that the tree structure will need to be stored in a database along with the forum info and messages (I am looking at modifying Jive for the forum). Today I started looking into the struts-menu example to learn how it works. It has hierarchical menus. (I just saw Matt Raible post about that also). Anyway, just letting you know I will be pondering this problem, and would like to see any thoughts any of you have about how such a system might be designed with struts. Thanks, Jeff Pittman Lamar Univ. Beaumont TX p.s., I have to get something operational by October, when I will give a talk on the subject of specialized forums for paleontology at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting. ------------------------- links, if you need 'em: struts-menu - http://husted.com/about/struts/resources.htm#extensions Jive - http://www.jivesoftware.com A few programs for biological calculation and manipulation of phylogenetic trees: PAUP (Phylogenetic Analysis Using Parsimony) - http://paup.csit.fsu.edu/ MacClade (cladogram is another name for a phylogenetic tree) - http://phylogeny.arizona.edu/macclade/macclade.html Phylip - http://evolution.genetics.washington.edu/phylip.html Mesquite - http://mesquiteproject.org/mesquite/mesquite.html And the mother of all trees: The Tree of Life - http://phylogeny.arizona.edu/tree/phylogeny.html -----Original Message----- From: Hartmut Bernecker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 1:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Tree I am also *very* interested about every information how trees can be handled in the struts-framework. I have to show a deep hierarchy with the browser. 1st question: the model: May it be good idea to work with deeply nested beans? - I think not, but because JSP-pages does work with beans, could be there a better way?? (The source of that hierarchy is a xml-document). 2nd question: creating the view: Who knows a taglib for managing that? Would it be a good practice to use XSLT with struts to create trees? TIA Hartmut Bernecker
