Support & Advice
If you think you've found a bug in Mesquite, our would like to
suggest a feature, please read this page.
Why doesn't Mesquite do <insert your favorite
calculation here>?
Mesquite is extensible. What it can do now is a small part of
what we envisage. We're aware of many things that could be added.
The biggest needs we feel at the moment are for likelihood calculations
and more tools for examining character correlations.
We would welcome your suggestions at  .
Of course, if you really want a new feature sooner than we can
add it, you are welcome to write your own module to implement
the feature. See the Mesquite website for information on development.
Why is this bug here?
If you think you have found a bug in Mesquite, please
report it to us (see below).
If we don't know about a bug, it is unlikely that it will
be fixed. It might be natural to presume that we know
about all the bugs in Mesquite, but it is not possible
for us to have tried out every combination of options
on every computer environment with every data matrix,
model, etc. If you are not sure if it is a bug (a large
number of users blame themselves when they encounter a
bug, presuming it is something they have done wrong),
please report it anyway. Even if your apparent "bug" is
a mistake you made, your mistake might indicate a poorly
designed interface that should be corrected.
That there will be bugs in Mesquite is inevitable. Mesquite
is a large project, about 1500 pages of source code when
printed single spaced at 7 point font (about 120,000 or
more lines of source; over 5MB of ASCII text). We don't
have a big team of people working on it; it was initially
written by a single person, and now two. We apologize
for the bugs that remain, and look forward to your bug
reports and efforts to aid us make Mesquite useful.
Mesquite is intended to become a community effort. Source
code is posted on the Mesquite
web site; we hope other programmers will help us improve
the system.
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Check out the Help system first
Mesquite doesn't have conventional documentation for all of its
features, but it does have various features to help you learn
how to use it. Check out the help page
for instructions. Also, browse through the example files, as they
contain many explanations and hints.
We recognize that Mesquite is a complex system that offers many
choices to the user. We plan to build macros and other tools to
help build paradigmatic analyses for users who don't want to sort
their way through options every time. However, they're only beginning
to be built.
Reporting bugs and requesting
advice
Please report bugs to
or to the Mesquite listserv (see below). Some bugs you may encounter
will be bugs not in Mesquite but in the operating system or Java
virtual machine (for example, see this list).
Partly to foster a community of users, and partly for efficiency,
we are encouraging users to sign up to a LISTSERV via which they
can report bugs and post queries about using Mesquite. You may
report bugs and ask for Mesquite advice via this LISTSERV. To
sign up for the listserv, send an email with the following message
in the body of the email:
subscribe MESQUITELIST YourFirstName YourSecondName
to
listserv@listserv.arizona.edu
where you replace "YourFirstName" by your first name,
and "YourSecondName" by your second name. Once you've
signed up, you can send a message to the list.
If you're reporting a bug, it's important that you are able to
specify, as precisely as possible, exactly what you did that generated
the bug. Try to find a precisely repeatable series of actions
that generate the bug. In any bug report, please specify the version
of Mesquite and any important modules and your operating system.
Be prepared to send us your data file so we can test the problem.
(Of course, we recognize that some messages may be more appropriately
directed directly to us. You may contact us at .
Java bugs that affect Mesquite
Below are problems in Java on various operating systems that
affect Mesquite. If these problems annoy you, please contact those
responsible for your Java virtual machine.
Mac OS 9
- The cursor will not change to reflect the current tool. This
is a limitation of the version of Java used on MacOS 9.
- There may be a rare, innocent exception thrown.
MacOS X 10.0 through 10.1.5
- If a pop-up menu appears, the colored
spinning cursor may appear and prevent you from choosing a menu
item for several seconds. You may loose control for 5-10 seconds.
If you move the mouse slightly, you will regain control more
quickly.
- Text in dialog boxes is sometimes
only partially visible. This is a bug in MacOS Java 1.3.1 Update
1.
- Windows near top of screen may be unresponsive (workaround:
move window down or resize). This is a bug in MacOS Java 1.3.1
Update 1.
- Various exceptions are thrown. (You will get a little window
noting various problems when this happens.) These are bugs in
MacOS Java 1.3.1 Update 1.
- Double clicking a file's icon in the Finder when Mesquite
is already running will open the file. However, if Mesquite
is not yet running, Mesquite will start but will fail to open
the file.
MacOS X 10.2 ("Jaguar") and 10.3
("Panther") running Java 1.3.1
In general Mesquite works well under Jaguar and Panther with Java
1.3.1, except for being slow in screen display, the annoying dialog
box problems, and, on some machines, an problem with chart display.
- Dialog boxes occasionally fail to show items (sometimes they
are totally blank!). Dialog boxes might also appear in the incorrect
location, or with items drawn double. If you wait for a moment,
the dialog should reappear correctly.
- Various exceptions are thrown. (You may get a little window
noting various problems when this happens.) These seem mostly
innocent.
- Occasionally when you try to drag a branch in the tree window
extra lines are left littering the screen.
- On some machines, a virtual machine bug causes the graphics
view of the chart window to stay visible even after switching
to the text or other views. This blocks one's ability to see
the text or other information. We have a workaround for this
problem; as this workaround itself exposes other virtual machine
bugs, we have not released it. However, if you work with charts
a lot, you may want a copy of this workaround; please contact
us if you do.
MacOS X 10.2 ("Jaguar") and 10.3
("Panther") running Java 1.4.1
We do not yet support Mesquite running under Mac OS X using the
Java 1.4.1 virtural machine, which as many bugs and whose graphics
are quite slow. The latest software from Apple includes both Java
1.3.1 and Java 1.4.1; Mesquite automatically requests use of 1.3.1.
Windows, Java up to and including 1.4.0
- Windows bounce up and down as menus change (a rapid shrink
& expansion). This is due to a design flaw either in Windows
or the Java VM; there is nothing we can do about it.
- After Mesquite is used for a while, about 5% of menu labels
are randomly scrambled with labels of other menu items. For
instance, the File menu might be labeled as the "Gray"
menu, or the "Histogram" menu, or have some other
label drawn "randomly" from among the menu items within
the menus. This is a bug in Sun's virtual machine (Sun has refused
to consider fixing this because we have been unable to reproduce
it in a smaller program.) Because of this problem and the confusion
it might cause, we have added a Reset Menus item in the File
menu. This will force Mesquite to rebuild the menus, which usually
corrects the mislabeling.
Linux/Unix etc
- Window sizes and placements sometimes are inappropriate under
some window managers. Some window managers refuse to let Mesquite
have control over window size and placement, and choose what
appear to be random sizes and placements of windows. This is
not in our control. Try changing your window manager. We have
found that the default installations for KDE and Gnome of Red
Hat 7 work well with Mesquite.
- Messages about Fonts not found on startup will be given commonly,
in fact we suspect on most installations on Linux and Solaris
of Sun's Java VM prior to 1.4. The problem is that you need
to install a supposedly optional package of fonts in order that
the default installation of Sun's Java VM work properly (see
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/changes.html#sunw).
We would have thought that if the default installation of a
product claims to support a program but doesn't, then that would
be considered a bug. Sun considered this to be not a bug, although
they seem to have fixed it...
- Dialog boxes sometimes appear very small, too small to be
used. This may be due to a bug in the virtual machine of Java
1.3 or earlier. Try running Mesquite with Java 1.4 or higher.
If this does not fix the dialog box sizing problem, please report
the bug to us.
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