[R] Re: GUIs

[Dave Lucy]

> > > formalities from one time to the next. So they get scared of the
> > > prospect of staring empty-minded at the R prompt. 

> Remember that there is product `not unlike R' that does have an extensive
> menu/dialogs front-end, so the pros and cons of GUI to S are not
> unexplored.  And I am in favour of one for R, but I do not give it high
> priority.  (It really would be man-months of work.)  We would need to sort
> out a cross-platform GUI interface design and have that running first or
> one ends up with a Windows-only GUI (as happened with all the examples
> above).

Personally I'm against GUI's - particularly for teaching, but can
appreciate why people who are occasional users may wish to have one. I
think that what we are really describing here is an assisted batch type
processing, where one gets menu items more as a reminder as to what sort
of things are availible for each task.

One of the easiest interfaces I have seen was the old DOS SPSS (V4 I
think) which had menus which when an item was selected would produce a
dialogue for the function allowing the user to enter parameters. Upon
closure the dialogue would shut pasting the appropriate command line into
the scratch-pad. The scratch-pad would then act as a batch file. This led
to an easy uptake of batch file composition. As I remember there was also
an object listing from which objects could be selected as function
dialogue items.

Any thoughts,

David.



********************************************************************
Dr. David Lucy
Department of Archaeological Sciences
University of Bradford
Bradford
West Yorkshire
BD7 1DP
UK

tel. +44 01274 233556
fax. +44 01274 235190
********************************************************************


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