New Features in GenGIS 2.0

GenGIS 2 is a major release that adds several new features in addition to a complete code overhaul and a number of bugfixes. Here is a summary of what's new:

Saving and Opening Sessions

GenGIS now supports the use of saved sessions: you can open up your datasets in GenGIS, manipulate them, and use the Save function to store your work in a '.ggis' file that can be opened later. See the manual for more details.

Plugins for Data Analysis

We have improved the Python / Rpy2 manager in the new version of GenGIS, and version 2 makes it considerably easier to perform certain standard statistical tests that we have implemented as plugins, see the Body location tutorial for examples. You can develop your own plugins using Python, and also build your own Python / Rpy2 scripts to be executed directly in GenGIS.

Linear gradient testing

The first version of GenGIS allowed a user to specify a geographic axis, and test whether the fit of a particular phylogenetic tree to that axis was significantly better than random. We have now added the ability to test all possible linear gradients at once, and get an interactive report that shows how well different gradients fit the tree.

Improved Mac version

Several graphical features of GenGIS were previously unavailable to Mac users because of problems with the wxWidgets libraries that the GenGIS GUI uses. We have now implemented a series of fixes to make color picking, dialog box interactions, and other GUI elements consistent between Windows and Mac.

Updated Layers, Location and Sequence Tabs

The interface for interacting with layers has changed, making it easier to select and deselect locations and sequences (this can also be done using the Analysis -> Select sequence dialog tool). The legends for sequences and locations are also much more informative, showing the mapping of color, shape and size attributes to different locations and sequences in the data set.