Bug in paste from clipboard

[Hayley Orlowski]

Hi,

Spent a few days trying to figure out this bug and thought it best to share. 

I am using Mesquite version 4.01 (build 1092) 9 July 2025, though this was present on earlier versions.

When using "Make new matrix from clipboard", Mesquite is unable to correctly identify the dimensions of the dataset if there are blank cells in the first column, resulting in it being unable to make the matrix.

This issue is also present when pasting data into an existing matrix. Mesquite prompts you by asking if you want to extend the selection to match the range, but incorrectly extends the range such that the selection contains one fewer column in that row. Pasting into this selection causes data formatting issues - the value that should be pasted into the non-selected cell gets pasted into the first cell of the next row, resulting in all other cells being shifted down.

Blank cells do not cause a problem when they are in a later column.

Best,

Hayley Orlowski

[Wayne Maddison]

Thank you, Hayley, for documenting this so well. We'll look into it very soon.

Wayne

[Wayne Maddison]

Hi Haley,

I tried this out, and everything worked for me. I'll show you what I did, so you can tell me if you are doing something differently.

This is what I have in the clipboard (triangles are tabs; little Ls lying down are end line characters):

I have a small file with four taxa, and when I choose Make New Matrix from... Clipboard, it shows this dialog:

and gives me this matrix:

This is what I expect.  

If instead I have this matrix in Mesquite, with all cells selected:

And then I paste the above matrix in, I end up with this:

This is what I expect. The blank cells in the clipboard don't overwrite the cells in the matrix, but the others do.

Can you give me instructions to match what you do when the problem occurs?

Thanks!

Wayne

[Wayne Maddison]

I may have found the problem! Were you pasting straight from Excel? Microsoft products use two characters to say "end of line", both carriage return and line feed, while other OSs only use 1. (I guess Microsoft is mimicking real typewriters, for which you could do a line feed without doing a carriage return!) Mesquite was not expecting this extra character, but Excel put it in there, even on a Mac. 

I've fixed Mesquite's handling of this, and hopefully it will fix your problem.

We plan to release 4.02 very soon.

Wayne

[Hayley Orlowski]

I was pasting straight from libreoffice, but also encountered the error when posting from Google Sheets. 

- Hayley

Hayley Orłowski (or-wuv-skee)

(She/her/hers)

MS student

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

Department of Earth Science

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mesquite Project" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mesquite-proje...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mesquite-project/38c4f734-e802-4db4-b234-cfae44eefbb1n%40googlegroups.com.

[Wayne Maddison]

We've just released Mesquite 4.02. If you can get a chance to see if it fixes your problem, a report would be appreciated.

Wayne