From krcoombes at mdacc.tmc.edu  Mon Jun  1 15:21:33 2009
From: krcoombes at mdacc.tmc.edu (Kevin R. Coombes)
Date: Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:21:33 -0500
Subject: [Rd] Recommendations for a quick UI.
In-Reply-To: <4A23662A.5030609@uthscsa.edu>
References: <4A23662A.5030609@uthscsa.edu>
Message-ID: <4A23D5DD.8060807@mdacc.tmc.edu>

Hi,

The following idea only partially answers your question....

I have successfully written a GUI using the tcl/tk package that ships 
with standard R. It is then possible (in Windows) to create a shortcut 
icon that runs the following command:
    C:\R\R-2.8.1\bin\R.exe --vanilla -e library(SuperCurveGUI);sc();
Note two features:
[1] the first part of the -e switch loads the library containing the GUI
[2] the second part (after the semicolon) launches the GUI

If you make a "normal" shortcut this way, a batch window will open 
showing the ongoing R session, which is not quite what you want. 
However, if you adjust the shortcut to "Run: Minimized", then (most) 
users will never see the batch window, and will only see the GUI.

The reasons that this only partially answers your question are
[1] It is Windows-specific
[2] I do not know how to set up the shortcut automatically upon 
installation.

    Kevin

Alex Bokov wrote:
> Hi. This is my first post to this list, I seem to be graduating to 
> from the r-help list. :-)
>
> I'm trying to wrap my R package in a GUI such that when the user 
> launches the app, they see my GUI window and never interact with the R 
> console at all. I don't have any fancy requirements for the GUI 
> itself-- all it needs to do is collect input from the user and pass 
> the input as arguments to an R function, which writes the results to a 
> file.
>
> I read the R Extensions Manual section about GUIs, and it seems like 
> overkill to write the thing in a compiled language and link against R 
> as a library when there are dozens of different interpreted 
> cross-platform GUI toolkits out there. Does anybody know of any 
> functioning examples of packages (or other add-ons) with GUIs that run 
> R silently in the background which I can study? Do they use the "R CMD 
> BATCH" mechanism, or something else?
>
> Thanks.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel



[Rd] Recommendations for a quick UI.
Kevin R. Coombes