From andy_liaw at merck.com  Wed Feb 25 18:54:04 2004
From: andy_liaw at merck.com (Liaw, Andy)
Date: Wed Feb 25 18:55:11 2004
Subject: [Rd] Script editor for Windows GUI
Message-ID: <3A822319EB35174CA3714066D590DCD504AF7870@usrymx25.merck.com>

I just have one question.  From my very little (and negative) experience
with the Java GUI for S-PLUS on *nix, one big problem is that it doesn't
work when running S-PLUS remotely, either via X or VNC (unless the display
is 8-bit):  The GUI is running, but on screen I just see one big black
rectangle.  Would this be a problem for R as well?  My impression was that
that is totally the problem with Java.  (BTW, I believe S-PLUS also installs
and uses its private JRE.)

Best,
Andy

> From: Simon Urbanek
> 
> On Feb 25, 2004, at 4:52 PM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> 
> > That's very interesting, but as you know Java installation 
> can be quite
> > problematic.  (It looks like the current Sun JVM 1.4.2_03 
> has several
> > issues, including not working with the R search engine, and 
> a warning 
> > on
> > mozilla.org about its Windows plugin.)
> 
> I'm aware of the problems caused by various JVM versions. 
> Although our 
> Java code is not directly affected, we plan to supply an optional 
> installer (for Windows) which will take care of the JVM and 
> install an 
> appropriate private JRE if necessary.
> 
> > We bundled a version of Tcl/Tk with the R Windows binary to try to 
> > avoid
> > compatibility issues, and even then I would prefer a native Windows
> > solution for this one.
> 
> I'm definitely not against a native editor. I don't want to 
> discourage 
> Chris, especially if he has already a working prototype. To the 
> contrary - one implicit point of my post was that we should stay in 
> contact, since we have implemented an editor as well and 
> thought about 
> the interface and the features, so we could exchange our experiences.
> 
> I also wanted to say that we may want to talk about bigger 
> scope here. 
> My concern is that the number of scattered GUIs for various platforms 
> is increasing and each GUI has own interfaces, inconsistent with 
> others, making it hard to switch between GUIs. If one wants to add 
> functionality to the 'preferred' GUI then others don't have 
> any benefit 
> from the extension. A platform-independent GUI would solve this 
> problem, since an improvement would affect all platforms. Furthermore 
> using Java, it is possible to offer the quite powerful Java 
> widget set 
> to R users, seamlessly integrated into the GUI, thus allowing 
> users to 
> extend the GUI as they please - using R. (Besides, users could even 
> integrate their own Java code with R, but that's another 
> story...). By 
> now we also have an own, working Java graphics device allowing us to 
> achieve really tight integration of all aspects of R. I don't claim 
> that this should replace the Windows GUI, but I think it might be an 
> interesting, flexible alternative. I know that the project is all but 
> easy, nevertheless I believe that we got quite far by now.
> 
> Simon
> 
> ---
> Simon Urbanek
> Department of computer oriented statistics and data analysis
> University of Augsburg
> Universit?tsstr. 14
> 86135 Augsburg
> Germany
> 
> Tel: +49-821-598-2236
> Fax: +49-821-598-2200
> 
> Simon.Urbanek@Math.Uni-Augsburg.de
> http://simon.urbanek.info
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
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> 
> 


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[Rd] Script editor for Windows GUI
Liaw, Andy