[R-gui] Editor in R and Tk/Windows focus problems

[John Fox]

Dear James, 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-sig-gui-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-sig-gui-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of 
> wettenhall at wehi.EDU.AU
> Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 8:36 AM
> To: p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk
> Cc: Soren.Hojsgaard at agrsci.dk; r-sig-gui at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R-gui] Editor in R and Tk/Windows focus problems
> 
> Apologies if people get multiple copies of recent emails.  We 
> just upgraded to Fedora, and I've been having pine/email problems...
> 
> Søren,
> 
> Great start with the Tcl/Tk editor for R.  A bit more work to 
> do to compete with some of the sophisticated editors at 
> http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/projects/Editors.html
> 
> but I think it's worth doing!
> 
> You may want to try the command:
> tksearch(txt,"foo","0.0","end")
> to search for "foo" between line 0, column 0 of the text 
> widget and the end.  A result like "4.5" means "foo" was 
> found on line 4, column 5.  This could be useful for 
> parenthesis matching.
> 
> tkindex(txt,"insert") should give you the current cursor position.
> 

The minimal editor in the Rcmdr package script window has standard editing
operations such as Find, Copy, Paste, etc. (along with some other stuff,
such as a submit button), accessible from the window menu and a right-click
context menu, so it wouldn't be hard simply to use this code.

> WINDOWS FOCUSING PROBLEMS
> 
> While I think a Tcl/Tk IDE/script editor for R is a great 
> idea, Windows users may be concerned about the problem of Tk 
> windows repeatedly hiding behind the RGui window (or 
> RGui/GraphApp stealing the focus).  This is particularly a 
> problem if I have my Windows taskbar on autohide.  When I 
> move my mouse from the taskbar to the (maximized) RGui 
> window, the taskbar disappears but so do any Tk windows run from R.
> 

It would be nice to fix this problem, which I believe only occurs with the
multiple-document interface.

Regards,
 John


> I'm trying to look into the GraphApp code to see if I can 
> find any clues.  Maybe one ugly way would be :
> 
> tktoplevel(use=GraphAppRConsoleWindowID)
> 
> where that window ID would have to be made available from the 
> C code in R-devel/src/gnuwin32/  ???
> 
> >From the Tk toplevel help...
> 
> Command-Line Name: -use
> Database Name: use
> Database Class: Use
> This option is used for embedding. If the value isn't an 
> empty string, it must be the the window identifier of a 
> container window, specified as a hexadecimal string like the 
> ones returned by the winfo id command. The toplevel widget 
> will be created as a child of the given container instead of 
> the root window for the screen. If the container window is in 
> a Tk application, it must be a frame or toplevel widget for 
> which the -container option was specified. This option may 
> not be changed with the configure widget command.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> James
> 
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