[EMBOSS] Plasmid drawing
mathog
mathog at caltech.edu
Mon Dec 5 16:35:31 UTC 2011
On Sun, 4 Dec 2011 11:25:56 +0100, Stefan wrote:
> are there any news in plasmid documentation and in-silico cloning
> with
> EMBOSS?
Pierre Lindenbaum wrote a nice little program called "cloneit" for
figuring out cloning
strategies. That is, specifically what series of reactions to use to
insert a particular
piece of DNA into a vector. Not sure if that is what you mean by
"in-silico cloning" or not. There is
a separate cgi version for web use. Here is the paper:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9682060?dopt=Abstract
The original distribution site is long since off line, but the code
says that it may
be redistributed (and incorporated in noncommercial software, but see
the exact wording
for details.) Anyway, if anybody wants to have a look, I packed up our
copies and put
them here:
http://saf.bio.caltech.edu/pub/software/molbio/cloneit.tar.gz
http://saf.bio.caltech.edu/pub/software/molbio/cloneitcgi.tar.gz
This is not a graphics program, it is a reaction planning program.
As for the graphical output of plasmid diagrams, historically none of
the drawing programs
does exactly what the end users want. (These get closer and closer,
but never quite cover
all the bases). For that reason it is really important that the
graphics driver be able to
output to an object format that can then be imported into a drawing
program and edited there.
Modifying an image never turns out as nicely. When going to object
formats it is key that
text remain text and not be converted into line segments or
paths. Users get really frustrated when they can't edit labels or
change fonts or font sizes.
Locally we have a hacked up GCG driver that emits cgm format for the
GCG drawing programs.
Nowadays going to SVG would make more sense.
While it is sometimes possible to read PDF back into a drawing program
like inkscape, text imported
that way is very hit and miss, mostly miss. Often it comes through
with each
letter as a separate text object, which is no fun at all to work with.
Other times it will come in with
each letter separately kerned, and when that kerning is removed, the
text jumps all over the place in
unpredictable ways. Why would you remove the kerning? Because there
is another bug/limitation
in inkscape where kerned text is automatically converted to images when
exporting to emf or wmf format,
as when trying to move that image into a powerpoint document. Moving
rotated text between various
programs is the most unreliable operation, as far as I can tell. For
instance, I have never found
a way to get text which runs at an angle other than 0 degrees from
inskcape into powerpoint with that
angle intact. The text comes through, but the angle is lost.
Regards,
David Mathog
mathog at caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
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