[R-gui] Installing SciViews

[Philippe Grosjean]

wvdgraaf at dds.nl wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> What do I need to install the latest package of SciViews? I already have R
> v.2.2.1 installed on my WinXP machine.
> 
> On http://www.sciviews.org/SciViews-R/index.html I read that required components
> are:
>  - SciViews-R version 0.8-9            (exe: 12,334 kb)
>  - SciViews R bundle version 0.8-9     (zip:    442 kb)
>  - R2HTML R package (>= 1.54)          (zip:    527 kb)
>  - Manual

When you install all those packages under R 2.2.X, you are sure that
they will work with each other.


> Then, on http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Descriptions/SciViews.html I find
> a newer version of SciViews-R: 0.9-4 (zip: 550kb). Also, I have found a version
> 1.56 of the R2HTML package (zip: 524 kb)on the web.

Yes, SciViews 0.9-4 is newer, and it is compatible with SciViews-R
version 0.8-9 (the first item in the list hereabove). It was necessary
to put this version on CRAN because they push always to be conpatible
with the development version of R (2.3.0). This is the same for R2HTML,
although, I don't know if its newest version 1.56 is fully compatible
with the rest.

Now, R 2.3.0 is planned to be released for next week. And I will have
the opportunity to move SciViews/SciViews-R entirely to version 0.9-X
and check further compatibility with the other pacakges on CRAN (R2HTML,
RCmdr, etc.).

The problem is the following one: R and R packages on CRAN are changing
very rapidly (a new version of at least one CRAN package every day or
so)! Those changes are never checked against compatibility with
SciViews-R (developers almost exclusively use Emacs-ESS, not SciViews)!
So, it is a huge work for me to recherck everything, make changes and
fix compatibility issues everytime a package changes.

So, my policy is the following: everything R makes a major update (like
2.2.X to 2.3.0), I recheck everything and propose a coherent suite of
packages on the SciViews-R web site. Then, eventually, some packages
become outdated. You have either the possibility to install everytrhing
from SciViews-R, so that oyu are sure of maximum compatibility... but
perhaps not everything up-to-date. Or, you update with latest versions
on CRAN... but take the risk to raise some compatibility issues.

That's the best I can do, given the voluntary nature of my work on
SciViews-R and the limited time I have to maintain it.

> Looking at the contents of the zip files and their sizes, I would say that the
> 0.9-4 zip from CRAN is a newer version of the bundle version 0.8-9 on
> sciviews.org.
> 
> This leaves me with the question what I need for a new install:
>  - do I need to get a newer version of the 12 Mb installer to use together with
> the 0.9-4 bundle and 1.56 R2HTML package? If so, where can I get it?
>  - can I use the old installer with the newer bundle and package?, or
>  - should I stick to the 0.8-9 installer and bundle, together with the 1.54
> package, in order to avoid clashes?

Please, let me something like one more month after the release of R
2.3.0 to check everything and to update the SciViews-R web site with
version 0.9-X.

Best,

Philippe Grosjean

> Thanks,
> 
> Wim van der Graaf
> 
> _______________________________________________
> R-SIG-GUI mailing list
> R-SIG-GUI at stat.math.ethz.ch
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-gui
> 
> 


-- 
..............................................<°}))><........
  ) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( (    Prof. Philippe Grosjean
  ) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( (    Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
  ) ) ) ) )   Mons-Hainaut University, Pentagone (3D08)
( ( ( ( (    Academie Universitaire Wallonie-Bruxelles
  ) ) ) ) )   8, av du Champ de Mars, 7000 Mons, Belgium
( ( ( ( (
  ) ) ) ) )   phone: + 32.65.37.34.97, fax: + 32.65.37.30.54
( ( ( ( (    email: Philippe.Grosjean at umh.ac.be
  ) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( (    web:   http://www.umh.ac.be/~econum
  ) ) ) ) )          http://www.sciviews.org
( ( ( ( (
..............................................................