[R] R Documentation(s)

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Wed, 3 May 2000 Setzer.Woodrow at epamail.epa.gov wrote:

> 
> 
> If I may throw in my two cents.  I sometimes consult with scientists who use
> GUI-based statistical packages for doing "simple" analyses of their data.  The
> packages I've seen don't do a good job of producing a usable audit trail.  If
> someone comes to me and says "What does this mean?" or "What do I do now?", I
> pretty much have to go and watch their actual keystrokes while they repeat
> (hopefully) the operations.
> 
> One real advantages to the dialects of S is that the script that does the
> analysis serves (or can serve, if well-commented) as an audit trail that can be
> rerun (with changes, if needed).   One take-home lesson here is, if there is to
> be a GUI that produces R function calls, it would be really helpful if it were
> easy to insert comments that document the actions, and that the function calls
> be captured in a file that can be 'sourced' to re-run the analysis.

The Axum-based GUI in S-PLUS 2000 does keep a history: you can even dump it
to a script to give command-line equivalent commands.  (That is commands
that run Axum, not say traditional graphics near-equivalents.)  That seems
the best of both worlds.

The R for Windows GUI does have a limited programmability. Everything you
do there generates S language commands that go into the commands history
(whether you like it or not). In both R and S-PLUS the history files are
plain text and can be edited at will later.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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