[Rd] Google Summer of Code 2009

Simon Urbanek simon.urbanek at r-project.org
Thu Feb 19 15:33:36 CET 2009 

On Feb 19, 2009, at 6:38 , Sklyar, Oleg (London) wrote:

> Two ideas:
>
> 1) A library for interactive plots in R
>
> R lacks functionality that would allow displaying of interactive  
> plots with two distinct functionalities: zooming and panning. This  
> functionality is extremely important for the analysis of large, high  
> frequency, data sets spanning over large ranges (in time as well).  
> The functionality should acknowledge Axis methods in callbacks on  
> rescale (so that it could be extended to user-specific classes for  
> axis generation) and should have a native C interface to R (i.e. no  
> Java, but such cross platform widgets like GTK or QT or anything  
> similar that does not require heavy-weight add-ons). GTK has been  
> used successfully from within R in many applications (RGtk, rgobby,  
> EBImage etc) on both *nix and Windows, and thus could be a  
> preferential option, it is also extremely easy to integrate into R.  
> The existing tools (e.g. iplots) are slow, unstable and lack support  
> for time/date plots (or actually any non-standard axes) and they are  
> all Java. We are looking into stanard xy-plots as well as image and  
> 3D plots. Obviously one can think of further interactivity, but this  
> would be too much for the Summer of Code project. A good prototype  
> would already be a step forward.
>

If primitive 3d scatterplot interactivity is all you want, go with  
rggobi. It's GTK and has all this already and much more. However,  
ggobi also shows why GTK is not a good choice for general interactive  
graphics toolkit - it [GTK] is slow and lacks reasonable graphics  
support. OpenGL is IMHO a better way to go since IG don't really  
leverage any of the widgets (you get them for free via R widgets  
packages anyway) and OpenGL gives you excellent speed, alpha-support  
and anti-aliasing etc.

As you can imagine I don't agree with most of your statements above  
and I'm happy to discuss them in a separate thread. Just as an aside  
iPlots 3.0 (announced for useR!/DSC) are no longer Java based and have  
a native C interface.

Cheers,
S


> 2) Cross platform GUI debugger, preferably further Eclipse  
> integration (beyond StatET capabilities)
>
> Tibco has recently released the S+ workbench for eclipse which has a  
> reasonable support for non-command line debugging. In the R  
> community, the StatET eclipse plugin mimics a lot of code  
> development functionality of S+ workbench, but has poor support for  
> in-line execution of R sessions in eclipse and does not have  
> debugging capabilities. Supporting this project further, or  
> developing a GUI debugger independent of eclipse, are both  
> acceptable options. The debugger should allow breakpoints, variable  
> views etc.
>
> For both of the above, our interest is mostly on the Linux side, but  
> one should look into cross-platform solutions.
>
> Regards,
> Oleg
>
> Dr Oleg Sklyar
> Research Technologist
> AHL / Man Investments Ltd
> +44 (0)20 7144 3107
> osklyar at maninvestments.com
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org
>> [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Friedrich Leisch
>> Sent: 18 February 2009 22:54
>> To: r-devel at r-project.org
>> Cc: Manuel.Eugster at stat.uni-muenchen.de
>> Subject: [Rd] Google Summer of Code 2009
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> in approximately one months time mentoring institutions can propose
>> projects for the Google Summer of Code 2009, see
>>
>>  http://code.google.com/soc/
>>
>> Last year the R Foundation succesfully participated with 4 projects,
>> see http://www.r-project.org/SoC08/ for details.  We want to
>> participate again this year. Our project proposals will be managed by
>> Manuel Eugster (email address in CC). Manuel is one of my PhD  
>> students
>> and mentored the Roxygen project last year. This mail is mainly
>> intended to make you aware of the program, Manuel will send a  
>> followup
>> email with more technical details in the next days.
>>
>> In this phase we are looking for potential mentors who can offer
>> interesting projects to students.  I don't think that we will get  
>> much
>> more than 4-6 projects, so don't be disappointed if you propose
>> something and don't get selected.
>>
>> There are two selection steps involved: (a) The R Foundation has to
>> compile an official "ideas list" of projects, for which students can
>> apply. Last year we had 8 of those. After that, we (b) get a certain
>> number of slots from Google (4 last year) and all prospective project
>> mentors can vote on which projects actually get funding.
>>
>> Currently we are looking for good ideas for phase (a). I give no
>> guarantees that all ideas will get on our official ideas list, what  
>> we
>> pick depends on the number of submissions and topics, respectively.  
>> We
>> want to make sure to have a broad range of themes, it is unlikely,
>> that we will, e.g., pick 10 database projects. Also keep in mind that
>> students have only three months time. This is not a research exercise
>> for the students, you should have a rough idea what needs to be done.
>>
>> Last year we had a majority of "infrastructure projects", and only  
>> few
>> with focus on statistical algorithms. We got a lot of applications  
>> for
>> the latter, so don't hesitate to formulate projects in that
>> direction. Important infrastructure may get precedence over
>> specialized algorithms, though, because the whole community can  
>> benfit
>> from those. But that will be a decision in phase (b), and we are not
>> there yet.
>>
>> Please don't send any ideas to me right now, wait for the above
>> mentioned email by Manuel on the technical details for idea
>> submission.
>>
>> Best,
>> Fritz
>>
>> -- 
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>> Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch
>>
>> Institut für Statistik                          Tel: (+49 89)
>> 2180 3165
>> Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität                  Fax: (+49 89)
>> 2180 5308
>> Ludwigstraße 33
>> D-80539 München
>> http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>>   Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180
>>          Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
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