From maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch  Wed Feb 25 15:39:27 2004
From: maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch (Martin Maechler)
Date: Wed Feb 25 15:40:02 2004
Subject: [Rd] Script editor for Windows GUI
In-Reply-To: <403CAF77.9000602@imperial.ac.uk>
References: <403C9EB0.6030601@imperial.ac.uk> <x2eksjl1bn.fsf@biostat.ku.dk>
	<403CAF77.9000602@imperial.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <16444.45983.947318.396580@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

>>>>> "Chris" == Chris Jackson <chris.jackson@imperial.ac.uk>
>>>>>     on Wed, 25 Feb 2004 14:21:43 +0000 writes:

    Chris> Peter Dalgaard wrote:
    >> Chris Jackson <chris.jackson@imperial.ac.uk> writes:
    >> 
    >>> editor.   I think it would be a good selling point if the equivalent
    >>> existed for R, without the need to use an external editor (or a hack
    >>> in Tcl/Tk).
    >>> 
    >>> 
    >> 
    >> Why is that a "hack"? I really must object. 
    >> 
    >> Tcl/Tk is a GUI framework with a text editing widget which can be
    >> trivially used for this kind of purpose (the same is likely true for
    >> other GUI frameworks like GTk).


    Chris> Sorry, wrong choice of word - no disrespect meant to
    Chris> the work you've done with R-Tcl/Tk.  I think I meant
    Chris> more "grafted-on".  Rgui itself is not written in
    Chris> Tcl/Tk - so to require installing a whole new GUI
    Chris> framework for such a fundamental task as editing R
    Chris> code seems a somewhat over-the-top solution.  

you would be right iff ....

- AFAIK you can't easily have a newer version of R for windows
  without tcltk -- hence it's there anyway
- the Bioconductor project (and others as well, notably John
  Fox' R Cmdr) have extended on the basic tcltk functionality
  for many GUI tasks. 
  
tcltk (or Gtk !) have the big advantage of working cross-platform.
This is a very important point since it eases maintainability,
documentation, teaching, .... and development considerably.

    Chris> Rather the strength of Tcl/Tk seems more for building your
    Chris> own customised GUIs.  R for Gnome, on the other hand,
    Chris> is written in gtk, but I've never used this so I
    Chris> don't know about its editing capability.

Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch>	http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler/
Seminar fuer Statistik, ETH-Zentrum  LEO C16	Leonhardstr. 27
ETH (Federal Inst. Technology)	8092 Zurich	SWITZERLAND
phone: x-41-1-632-3408		fax: ...-1228			<><


[Rd] Script editor for Windows GUI
Martin Maechler