[R] The hidden costs of GPL software?

[Philippe Grosjean]

John Fox wrote:
> [...] (sorry, this is long mail, and I want to comment only details)
> By the way, if there were 
> something I could wish for here it would be a slightly 
> broader set of Tk widgets to be included with the Tcl/Tk that 
> installs with R for Windows, since using widgets outside of 
> this set creates installation obstacles for lower-level users.

Then, take a look at the tcltk2 package in the SciViews bundle (probably, in
the next version, I will take it out of the bundle). You have there tile
(themable widgets with notebook tabs, progress bar, and many more... and
very soon combo boxes and lists/trees). You have also the famous tkTable,
and a separate combobox and a tree, and a support for tooltips everywhere...
Just propose if you need more! All this runs under Windows, but I still got
problems to compile it under other platforms.

> I doubt that many list 
> members would look favourably on the statistical-methods 
> "decision tree" in MicrOsiris, for example. One solution is 
> to include PDF "manuals" with packages. I've done this, for 
> example, with my effects and Rcmdr packages.
> The introductory manual supplied with Thomas Lumley's survey 
> package is another, similar example. Maybe there's a better 
> way of integrating such non-vignette manuals with the help 
> system -- something like help(manual=package).

I tend to have the same opinion than John (although I thing that both a good
manual, and a better online help could be beneficial): a PDF manual is much
more readable than a wiki! Why not to propose PDF manuals in the \doc
section of CRAN which have a GNU Free Documentation License
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), so that the manual could be
progressively enhanced by many authors?

Best,

Philippe Grosjean