From rossini@u.washington.edu  Wed May  1 14:55:22 2002
From: rossini@u.washington.edu (A.J. Rossini)
Date: 01 May 2002 06:55:22 -0700
Subject: [Rd] maketitle.pl for Perl 4.004
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0205011526080.426-100000@kleigh.nl>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0205011526080.426-100000@kleigh.nl>
Message-ID: <87y9f4nfat.fsf@jeeves.blindglobe.net>

>>>>> "peter" == Peter Kleiweg <kleiweg@let.rug.nl> writes:

    >> It seems like it might be worth reconsidering your software platform
    >> in light of your hardware requirements.

    peter> It seems some people think I am criticising the development of R
    peter> because it won't work (in some time) on my machine. That is not
    peter> the case. My comments are meant in general, as something to
    peter> think about. My only interest is in helping the development of
    peter> R, with the limited suggestions I can offer.

No, the general issue is that software construction is difficult.
There are tradeoffs, and your comments actually are more specific than
general, bringing up a situation which is not necessarily common.

People do want to have ancient software supported.  I.e. with ESS, we
ended up supporting truly ancient, unbuildable (on modern compiler
platforms) software, i.e. Emacs 19.28, because it was what DEC
shipped, and a vocal (SMALL) minority wanted it.  It crippled (but
didn't halt) development of some rather useful features, because of
lisp-level functionality that was introduced by the end of 19.xx
series, Emacs 19.34, which was deployed around 1995 or so (I'd have to
check dates, but its ancient).  In retrospect, we should've nuked
support in 1999 (not 2001).

I don't feel that your comments are critical, but I do feel that they
aren't addressing the point (well, it's one, anyway), which is how to
get a usable system built and deployed given the constraints of all
(developers and users) involved.  Your constraints are not really
solvable (want R 1.5+, and Perl 4..), and hence, I suggested (modern,
functional) tools which may solve it, of course introducing a
completely different (and unevaluated) set of tradeoffs...

best,
-tony

-- 
A.J. Rossini				Rsrch. Asst. Prof. of Biostatistics
U. of Washington Biostatistics		rossini@u.washington.edu	
FHCRC/SCHARP/HIV Vaccine Trials Net	rossini@scharp.org
-------------- http://software.biostat.washington.edu/ ----------------
FHCRC: M-W: 206-667-7025 (fax=4812)|Voicemail is pretty sketchy/use Email
UW:   Th: 206-543-1044 (fax=3286)|Change last 4 digits of phone to FAX
(my friday location is usually completely unpredictable.)


-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._


[Rd] maketitle.pl for Perl 4.004
A.J. Rossini