From pauljohn32 at gmail.com  Thu Sep 27 20:18:30 2012
From: pauljohn32 at gmail.com (Paul Johnson)
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:18:30 -0500
Subject: [Rd] tcltk capability
In-Reply-To: <CAP01uRn1EdG0cGyzoDPwmSaK2wiUWQ3mrOY3GrjMOT2qeSCXjQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP01uRn1EdG0cGyzoDPwmSaK2wiUWQ3mrOY3GrjMOT2qeSCXjQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAErODj_0BLVxjTZ7tM6FKnJGhrwWOeMJ+ivQLV9srBb2JveKoQ@mail.gmail.com>

Sorry I did not see this sooner.  Response below:

On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Gabor Grothendieck
<ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are quite a few packages that make use of tcltk and although
>
> - most R distributions have tcltk capability
> - its possible to query this via capabilities()[["tcltk"]]
> - attempting to build a package that needs it on such an R
> distribution will give a message letting one know
>
> users still seem to have problems with this.

I agree that packages are using tcltk, but users do so at their peril.
 Just loading tcltk breaks multicore functions like mclapply. I don't
understand why, you might be able to explain it to me.

http://bugs.r-project.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=15040

tcltk is discouraged, at least to some in R core.

I would really appreciate some guidance on what graphics library I
should use to develop GUI for R programs.  There's no future in tcltk,
apparently, but I don't know what to work with.

pj

pj

>
> There was recently an R bug report submitted that likely stemmed from
> the user having such a build of R and recently there was also an R
> help post that seemed to be related to this as well.  As more and more
> packages add GUI capability these incidents are bound to increase.
>
> The best situation would be to arrange that every distribution of R
> have tcltk capability but if this is difficult to arrange then I
> suggest there be a message at start up similar to the existing locale
> message letting the user know that the R distribution they are running
> lacks tcltk capability.  Preferably the message would be somewhat
> menacing so that users are encouraged to get a different distribution
> of R right from the start.
>
> This might reduce such problem reports somewhat.
>
> --
> Statistics & Software Consulting
> GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc.
> tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP
> email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com
>
> ______________________________________________
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-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science    Assoc. Director
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504     Center for Research Methods
University of Kansas               University of Kansas
http://pj.freefaculty.org            http://quant.ku.edu



[Rd] tcltk capability
Paul Johnson