From P.Dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk  Wed Mar 28 17:40:39 2007
From: P.Dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk (Peter Dalgaard)
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:40:39 +0200
Subject: [Rd] Bridging R to OpenOffice
In-Reply-To: <200703280933.45736.sdavis2@mail.nih.gov>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0703281210390.31714-100000@reclus.nhh.no>	<200703280648.54111.sdavis2@mail.nih.gov>	<460A6B89.8030903@sun.com>
	<200703280933.45736.sdavis2@mail.nih.gov>
Message-ID: <460A8C77.2040009@biostat.ku.dk>

Sean Davis wrote:
> On Wednesday 28 March 2007 09:20, Stefan Zimmermann wrote:
>   
>> Still didn't get the point, or missed the topic ?
>>     
>
> I had gotten the point, yes--just trying to be helpful.  I'm sorry it wasn't 
> taken as such. 
>
>   
Your reply was largely to the point. Excel and Calc are architecturally
different, but present a similar user interface. Knowing what can be
done with Excel is useful for pointing out directions in which you might
want to go with Calc. Given that the original poster pointed to R's
COM/DCOM interfaces, he probably knows all about this already, though.
> Sean
>
>
>   
>> It's OpenOffice.org and R not Excel and R, two totally different
>> products at least from a philosophical standpoint. Not everybody is
>> willing to pay license fee for Excel to be able to use R via a GUI.
>> That's how the idea was born to integrate or bridge R with
>> OpenOffice.org Calc
>> Access statistical data analysis functionality computed by the almighty
>> R engine from menues in Calc, and getting the results back in Calc (more
>> for users than for developers). A plugin could do the job.
>> There is no point in saying "there is something in Excel" like there is
>> none in saying "Why not using "S" ?
>> You may want to follow the link, offered by Leonard, to the "Google
>> Summer of Code"-project which is menthored by Sun Microsystems
>> (Star/OpenOffice developers), to get a clearer picture about it.
>> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2007#Integration_of
>> _R_into_Calc
>>
>> best regards
>> Stefan
>>
>> Sean Davis said the following on 28.03.2007 12:48:
>>     
>>> On Wednesday 28 March 2007 06:25, Roger Bivand wrote:
>>>       
>>>> On Wed, 28 Mar 2007, Hin-Tak Leung wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> Hmm, if all you are interested is reading/writing Excel spreadsheets
>>>>> from R, there are much lighter and easier ways of doing it, than
>>>>> hooking up with openoffice. The Perl people have had
>>>>> Spreadsheet::ParseExcel and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel for years (and
>>>>> they work quite well, personal experience). Those are tiny
>>>>> (a couple of Mb's?) compared to the size of openoffice.
>>>>>           
>>>> I don't think this is the problem here - the proposal says: "Create an
>>>> add-on component that allows a Calc user to let the R environment do
>>>> calculations on data from Calc cells and put the results into the
>>>> spreadsheet again". It feels much more like embedding R in the OO
>>>> spreadsheet and/or elsewhere, which would be similar to using DCOM in
>>>> Excel. There would also be questions about how tightly integrated an
>>>> embedded R should be, how functionality would be provided and
>>>> documented, and how such a setup ought to be administered and
>>>> maintained.
>>>>
>>>> As RExcel, the structure depends crucially on having joint expertise in
>>>> place to write and maintain the R script glue (dialogues) to provide the
>>>> functionality being added to Calc. Typically, this would be something an
>>>> organisation of some size might need, but it would be unlikely to be a
>>>> GUI for novice R users unwilling to scale the learning curve (a steep
>>>> learning curve, of course, means learn a lot in a short time, hence a
>>>> good thing!).
>>>>         
>>> There are examples of doing this with Excel, which have been quite
>>> successful. Here is at least one example (which I post for potential
>>> contact information):
>>>
>>> http://linus.nci.nih.gov/BRB-ArrayTools.html
>>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>       
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>   


-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             ?ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
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[Rd] Bridging R to OpenOffice
Peter Dalgaard