[R] productivity tools in R?

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 02/07/2009 5:10 AM, Warren Young wrote:
> Michael wrote:
>> I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
>> reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
>> he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
>> my PC Windows?
> 
> Yes, the Mac GUI for R is a lot nicer than the Windows version.  I guess 
> it's just a matter of what interested the people who wrote each, as 
> there's no technical reason it has to be that way.  Maybe someone will 
> port some of the Mac GUI's features over to the Windows version.

The Windows GUI was written before the Mac GUI, and was written using a 
fairly strange toolkit, which are two reasons the Mac looks prettier. 
But the Windows GUI has a few advantages over the Mac:

  You can copy from the console, prompts and all, and paste just the 
commands, to re-execute a sequence of commands.

  The cursor won't move to places where input isn't allowed, so the up- 
and down-arrow keys operate more consistently.

  The history() command is more sensible by default.

  Installing packages defaults to installing dependencies, and the menu 
layout for doing a local install makes more sense to me.


The syntax hints in the Mac GUI would be nice, as would a number of 
other features there.  (The Windows GUI does have syntax completion 
using TAB, but not the hints.)  But the Windows GUI is not so bad.

Duncan Murdoch