Jalview command line

Dear Jalview team,
I’m new to this mailing list, please excuse me if my question has already been answered previously.

I am trying to create a jalview file (.jar) including an amino-acid alignment, the associated tree and some annotations.
To do this, I want to use the command line. I tried:

java -Djava.ext.dirs=/Applications/Jalview/lib -cp /Applications/Jalview/Jalview.jar jalview.bin.Jalview -open my_aln.fas -colour ZAPPO -annotations my_annot.jalview -tree my_tree.nwk -jalview test.jar

This works fine and creates the test.jar file correctly. However, when I add the -nodisplay option to do this without User Interface, the file test.jar does not include the associated tree. Is this a bug or I am doing something wrong?

I also have 2 other questions:

  • Is it possible to include (again using the command line) the nucleotide alignment that corresponds to the AA alignement? I have it in a separate fasta file.
  • Is it possible to export a .html file including the alignment and the tree and annotations associated? From what I have seen, it seems that Jalview only exports the AA alignement + annotations. Also, is it possible to wrap the alignement using the command line?

Thanks a lot for your help.
Julien

···
-- 
Julien Roux, PhD
[http://www.unil.ch/dee/page38327.html](http://www.unil.ch/dee/page38327.html)
Keller group, Department of Ecology and Evolution
Biophore, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
tel: +41 21 692 4182    fax: +41 21 692 4165

Dear Jalview team,
I’m new to this mailing list, please excuse me if my question has already been answered previously.

I am trying to create a jalview file (.jar) including an amino-acid alignment, the associated tree and some annotations.
To do this, I want to use the command line. I tried:

java -Djava.ext.dirs=/Applications/Jalview/lib -cp /Applications/Jalview/Jalview.jar jalview.bin.Jalview -open my_aln.fas -colour ZAPPO -annotations my_annot.jalview -tree my_tree.nwk -jalview test.jar

This works fine and creates the test.jar file correctly. However, when I add the -nodisplay option to do this without User Interface, the file test.jar does not include the associated tree. Is this a bug or I am doing something wrong?

No - you aren’t doing anything wrong. Including trees in project files whilst in headless mode is actually an ‘unimplemented’ capability (aka a bug, I guess :slight_smile: ), and I’ve recorded it as such here: http://issues.jalview.org/browse/JAL-764

The reason Jalview fails to write out the tree is because the jalview project IO code is tightly coupled to the Jalview GUI code, and in fact uses the GUI classes to discover what trees are associated with a particular alignment. I do plan to fix up this problem - but not for the next release (ie, not within the next few weeks). I hope that doesn’t inconvenience you!

I also have 2 other questions:

  • Is it possible to include (again using the command line) the nucleotide alignment that corresponds to the AA alignement? I have it in a separate fasta file.

not currently, but it’s a good feature request. There is a lot of work to be done improving the dna+protein support in Jalview, which is currenty oriented towards working with EMBL/uniprot records, rather than your own nucleotides+translated regions.

  • Is it possible to export a .html file including the alignment and the tree and annotations associated? From what I have seen, it seems that Jalview only exports the AA alignement + annotations.

again, a good feature request, although perhaps stepping outside Jalview’s remit, since we provide the JalviewLite applet for doing combined alignment and tree visualization on a web page. Jalview only has html generation code for alignments, and doesn’t include any means of generating interactive html for the tree (it only supports PNG and EPS generation from the GUI, in fact). What kind of functionality do you need here ?

Also, is it possible to wrap the alignement using the command line?

Only by passing in a custom jalview.properties file, via the ‘props’ argument. You can prepare one by first quitting all your jalview instances, then making a backup of your current properties file (~/.jalview_properties ), then start jalview and edit the alignment display settings in the preferences dialog from the ‘Tools’ window. You can test the settings by dragging an alignment into Jalview (after hitting OK to save your preference settings), to see how they have affected the initial alignment display. Then, once you’re happy with the default alignment rendering preferences, close jalview, and make a copy of the current ~/.jalview_properties file before re-instating your old preferences file from the backup. You can then use this specially prepared properties file from the command line.

It sounds a faff, but there are around a dozen options controlling the layout of the alignment, and this is the easiest way to set them all.

thanks for the email, and I hope you’ll keep in touch regarding the bug report about the tree import in headless mode. If you like, you can register on the jalview issues tracker above, and then ‘watch’ the bug, so you get notified about when I or someone else starts fixing it!

Jim.

Thanks a lot Jim for the very quick answer,
It seems that the applet might actually be a good solution for what I need, I guess it is more flexible and complete
I’ll have a look at the documentation
I also also registered to “watch” the bug, it may be one day useful to use this feature :wink:
Have a good week
Julien

···
-- 
Julien Roux, PhD
[http://www.unil.ch/dee/page38327.html](http://www.unil.ch/dee/page38327.html)
Keller group, Department of Ecology and Evolution
Biophore, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
tel: +41 21 692 4182    fax: +41 21 692 4165