NEXUS Data Editor for Windows
A program to edit NEXUS format data files
Roderic D. M. Page
Last modified 13 September 2001
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Version 0.5.0 now available for download!
Copyright
© 2001 Roderic D. M. Page.
What is NDE?
NDE (NEXUS Data Editor) is a program to create and edit NEXUS format data files on computers running Microsoft Windows 95/NT 4.0. The main motivation behind my writing the program was to provide an easy to use data editor similar to that provided in the Macintosh program MacClade (note that NDE has none of the data or tree analysis features of MacClade). The NEXUS format is becoming more widely used on PCs now that DOS and Windows versions of PAUP* are available for testing.
In addition to a spreadsheet data editor, NDE makes it easy to fully annotate the data with both text and pictures, and to have lengthy descriptive character and character state names. This last feature avoids the constraint imposed by MacClade of character and state names being being limited to 32 characters. Hence cryptic phrases such as "ant. temp. marg." (anterior temporal margin) can be avoided. The ability to have lengthy character names, together with text comments, means that the data set can be largely self documenting. Indeed, if suitably constructed the character names and comments can be exported by the program directly into a file readable by a word processor, automating the production of character definitions for publication. NDE can also output HTML. Although designed as a NEXUS file editor, NDE also has limited support for other formats, including Hennig86 and DELTA.
Downloading and installing the program
Download NDE
Although NDE was originally developed on Windows 95 and NT 4.0, this installer has been tested on Windows Vista.
Join the NDE users mailing list
To receive information about new features and bug fixes, please join the NDE
users mailing list. This list is only used to send you information about NDE.
User's guide
A detailed user's guide is available online
Release history
0.5.0 13 September 2001
Fixed Windows 2000 display bug affecting character list.
0.4.9 29 January 2001
Fixed minor bug that prevented NDE from reading ranges of numbers (e.g., "1-2")
correctly (Diana Percy, Jeremy Bruhl).
0.4.8 17 October 2000
NDE no longer expires.
0.4.7
0.4.6 24 January 2000
Bug fixes
- When exporting Hennig86 files the program got confused between two different
file extensions (*.hng and
*.ss) (Bill Ballard). This
has now been fixed. NDE uses .ss for compatibility with WinClada.
- When merging two data files all '?' in the second file got converted to
'-' (Gonzalo Giribet). This has been fixed.
0.4.5 30 November 1999
Bug fixes
- Deleting a character that was an element of a CHARSET would cause NDE to
crash (Vince Smith).
- Spurious characters were appended to the end of long comments when displayed
in the attributes window (Vince Smith).
- Printing bug fixed (Isabel Marshall).
New features
- "Lock data" button added, so data matrix can be browsed without risk of changing any data.
- Paragraph formatting in RTF output for character report improved.
- PAUP block can be edited in a text window, so that commands affecting such things as outgroup and rooting options can be preserved.
- Tooltips added for toolbar buttons.
0.4.2 1 May 1999
Context menu bug fixed.
0.4.1 1 March 1999
Edit control bug fixed.
0.4.0 1 February 1999
Numerous bug fixes
0.3.2 22 December 1998
First public release.
