From ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk  Wed Feb 25 16:05:53 2004
From: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian Ripley)
Date: Wed Feb 25 16:06:11 2004
Subject: [Rd] Script editor for Windows GUI
In-Reply-To: <16444.45983.947318.396580@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0402251500060.8902-100000@gannet.stats>

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, Martin Maechler wrote:

> >>>>> "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

Not so: the mini installation has no Tcl/Tk support.

> - 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.

But it does not work naturally for Windows users.  It does make sense to 
me to use a Windows editor widget for script windows under Windows, which 
is where people seem to want them.  There are also event-loop issues which 
mean I would have little confidence that a Tcl/Tk-based editor would work 
smoothly under Windows.

>     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.

It has none, not even a version of the data editor.


Let's not discourage Chris from doing this: it would satisfy a lot of 
Windows users, I believe.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595


[Rd] Script editor for Windows GUI
Prof Brian Ripley