[R] GUIs

[Duncan Temple Lang]

Timothy H. Keitt wrote:
> Although my preference is the command line, for those who want a GUI, I
> can't help but think that the path of least resistance is to write a
> plugin for gnumeric that calls R as a slave process. I haven't checked
> out the gnumeric plugin api, but my guess is that it would allow you to
> add menu items and write dialogs. As pointed out, someone new would have
> to pick up the ball and run with it. Lets not divert effort away from
> developing R itself.

A little more than a year ago, we developed an R plugin for Gnumeric
as part of the Omegahat project.  It embeds R directly within Gnumeric
rather than using a slave process.  One can register R functions as
Gnumeric function, and additionally, from within R one can access,
edit and create worksheets and their contents. 
The "package" is available from
  http://www.omegahat.org/RGnumeric
(It may need some minor surgery to be consistent with recent versions
of Gnumeric, but these are not structural changes.)


I too believe that this has great potential for certain types of
teaching. It is one of the directions that I am pursuing with Deb
Nolan at Berkeley and others. The particular style of pedagogy we are
investigating is more ambitious and involved than the standard
"Minitab/Excel-like" point-and-click. However, as part of the StatDocs
project, we are piecing together components that could be directly
used to create such an environment. We are also explicitly exploring
ways of marrying the GUI-style with more comprehensive, reproducbile
analyses that an instructor and student can share, discuss, modify,
etc. So, many of the topics that have been discussed in this
interesting thread may well be realized.

To implement these ideas, we are using the RGtk package to build
specialized GUIs; the gtkDevice package for embedding graphics devices
in HTML widgets; using R & GGobi for interactive/direct manipulation
graphics; and currently exploring embedding R within AbiWord, the
Gnome word processor.  All of these tools share Gtk as a common
fundamental component, and that is one of the reasons for pushing on
the RGtk package.  Also, we can exploit CORBA since these tools have
support from Orbit, the Gnome layer on top of CORBA.




> 
> T.
> 
> On Fri, 2002-06-28 at 11:50, Don MacQueen wrote:
> > Regarding all of the various visions/dreams/suggestions for GUIs that 
> > have been raised recently: who is going to do it?
> > 
> > The R core folks are obviously devoting large amounts of time and 
> > effort to maintaining and improving R, and helping R users. I have 
> > trouble imagining they have much time left over for the major 
> > undertaking that the various GUI visions would entail.
> > 
> > R is by far the best organized, best documented, and best supported 
> > of the half a dozen or so open-source software projects I've tried to 
> > use. So when people start talking about improvements to the 
> > documentation, fancy linking, and all that--yes, I understand. But 
> > let's not lose sight of how good it already is.
> > 
> > -Don
> > -- 
> > --------------------------------------
> > Don MacQueen
> > Environmental Protection Department
> > Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
> > Livermore, CA, USA
> > --------------------------------------
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-- 
_______________________________________________________________

Duncan Temple Lang                duncan at research.bell-labs.com
Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies    office: (908)582-3217
700 Mountain Avenue, Room 2C-259  fax:    (908)582-3340
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         http://cm.bell-labs.com/stat/duncan
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