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The mx wiki
Welcome to the home of the mx ('m'atri'x', yes we're considering other names ) project.
mx is a collaborative on-line (completely web-based) content management system for evolutionary systematists, particularly those working on descriptive taxonomy.
mx handles a wide range of data. Researchers are presently using it to manage morphological matrices, specimen and sequence data, taxonomic descriptions, images, collecting events, taxonomic hierarchies and more.
Thanks to Johan Lijleblad there is a now a basic Guide available that helps users start using the matrix-related functions of mx. That guide was originally written for a specific project, but we've translated it to a more generally applicable set of help that is now available on this wiki. The alpha version, including all of Johan's figures or replica's there of is now completely loaded to the wiki.
We've recently tied in-application help to this wiki. That help will ultimately indexed here. Until then you can access the help pages directly through though wiki-help links in the mx application. If you don't find help after clicking the wiki-help link try the old help link the application. If there is help text there feel free to copy it over to the wiki, its permanent home! We are planning that the old help link will will ultimately be revamped for project-specific help for those who want to customize comments to project members.
Why use mx?
We've started a list here.
What's it being used for?
The mx database currently has both private and public front ends, each of which are web based. Search forms or other public accessible components can be wrapped is different layouts relatively easily:
Projects accessible to public
- Catalogous Evaniidorum
- Hymenoptera Glossary and see the wiki for that project
- The American Entomological Institute
Screenshots
Researchers use a private set of forms to enter and manage their data, see these screen shots.
How do I get it?
Source
- Developers are currently using SVN to manage sourcecode, but the repository is not yet on Sourceforge. If you are interested in developing via SVN contact us.
- Source, bug tracking etc. at Sourceforge.
Installation notes
There are some installation notes here.
Credits
mx is coded by Matt Yoder and Krishna Dole with help from Andy Deans. Johan Lijleblad and Katja Seltmann have provided documentation and much useful feedback. Many others, in particular the Wharton (TAMU), Cognato (MSU), and Heraty (UCR) labs have provided feedback.
Various previous projects influenced the development of mx, in particular:
- The table structure for specimens and collecting event related data is loosely based on the TAMUIC insect collection's database programmed by Yoder and Oswald. That database was in turn loosely based on a very early draft (pre 1998) of the Specify table structure.
- Some of the tables containing matrix related data are based on Yoder's early MS Access database mtrx, which was greatly simplified from Gregor Hagedorn's software Delta Access (apparently no longer available on-line, but see here).
- We presently have some tables that have not been developed (i.e. we have no working front end) that are very loosely based on the Metacanthomorpha database.
