From bates@stat.wisc.edu  Mon Nov 15 22:05:22 1999
From: bates@stat.wisc.edu (Douglas Bates)
Date: 15 Nov 1999 16:05:22 -0600
Subject: (G)UI for R and in R
In-Reply-To: Thomas Vogels's message of "Mon, 15 Nov 1999 15:47:01 -0500"
References: <199911152047.PAA18728@infiniti.ece.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <6r4sen9zrx.fsf@franz.stat.wisc.edu>

First, let me say that I come from the command-line-oriented world and
most of the time I find that graphical user interfaces just get in the
way.  Like many people who use implementations of the S language
(i.e. S-PLUS 3.x, S-PLUS 5.x, and R) on Unix/Linux systems, my
preferred environment for running and editing S code is emacs with the
ESS package.

My responses on a GUI for writing scripts are from this perspective
but I do recognize that many people find a GUI much more comfortable
than trying to remember lots of archane function names and, in the
case of emacs, keystrokes.

Thomas Vogels <tov@infiniti.ece.cmu.edu> writes:

> 2) for help with writing R scripts
>    Does R help me with a graphical introspection tool?  I guess this
> is what the object explorer is meant for.  Can I bring up a list of
> objects and kinda click my way to the attributes of the object?  its
> data?  (Not unusual scenario: And why does apply not work this time?
> Oh, wrong dimensions, I forgot the "drop=F" option...)  Can I click on
> a function and send it to an editor?  Find out where it came from?

(BTW, I think you mean "graphical inspection tool".)  Although not a
substitute for graphical inspection, I find Martin Maechler's "str"
function to be invaluable when I am trying to remember the structure
of various objects, including (and perhaps especially) those for which
I designed the structure.

As far as editing a function definition, there are excellent
facilities within ESS for that.  Object name completion within ESS is
by itself worth the price of learning to use the mode.

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(G)UI for R and in R
Douglas Bates