[Rd] Another wishlist for R

[Warnes, Gregory R]

> 1. Add "head" and "tail" to R base.  
>    Patrick Burns has these: 
> http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/public.html#genutil
>    Very handy functions for checking data manipulation.


How about we just add these to a package available on CRAN?  How about we
just make a package of the Burns Statistics functions?  There are already
.Rd files...

> 4. Increased integration of text and graphics output (for 
> PDF, in particular).
>    Sweave is fantastic for quality reporting, but can be a lot of work
>    when a quick analysis is all that is needed.
>    Often I would like to do something like print a box plot 
> and include an
>    anova table, for example: 
>      pdf("file")
>      boxplot(y~x)
>      frame()
>      sink.to.pdf()
>      frame()
>      anova(lm(y~x))
>      sink()
>      dev.off()
>    I know of no such (simple) tools.  Ben Bolker has a an idea here: 
>      http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/R/help/02b/4179.html

In gregmisc I have a function textplot which does much of what you want, and
I've just added (in CRAN incoming now) a new function sinkplot() which
accomplishes exactly what you've asked for.  Here is the example:

   set.seed(12456)
   x <- factor(sample( LETTERS[1:5], 50, replace=T))
   y <- rnorm(50, mean=as.numeric(x), sd=1)

   par(mfrow=c(1,2))
   boxplot(y~x, col="darkgreen")

   sinkplot()
   anova(lm(y~x))
   sinkplot("plot",col="darkgreen")

The only thing that isn't quite right is the default R font is
proportionally spaced so the matrix columns don't line up right.  I'll need
change the default font.   [Are any of the Hershey fonts fixed width?]


-Greg


LEGAL NOTICE\ Unless expressly stated otherwise, this messag...{{dropped}}