From r at mikl.dk  Sun Oct 11 12:38:23 2009
From: r at mikl.dk (Mikkel Meyer Andersen)
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:38:23 +0200
Subject: [Rd] R on Google Android
Message-ID: <3796c6d50910110338u2850b2e6o60fbc2563a8656d6@mail.gmail.com>

Hi.

As a follow-up on [1], I'd like to raise the question of whether it's
practically possible to compile R to the Google Android mobile
platform?

The best way would probably be to use the Native Developer Kit [2],
NDK, and in that way get a library. This could then be interfaced to
by a Java-program.

I know that several questions have been raised against the idea, e.g.
with the input methods and all that, but I wouldn't be that hard to
make an alternative input method or even a new language that could be
compiled to R.

The reason I'm raising this question again, is that I would really
want a (basic) statistical package on my mobile phone, and I think it
would be kind of stupid to start writing one from scratch when R is
already out there.

Unfortunately I don't know that much about build systems and are not
capable of assesing whether it indeed would be possible to port R to
Android through NDK. I know a bit of both R, Java, and C and would be
able to help trying some different approaches, if anybody wants to
help me.

The alternative is to start writing a new mobile statistical package
from the beginning. And although it should only maybe support 5% of
the functionality of R, it would take a lot of time to do that. And
I'd love to avoid that when good people has already done an amazing
job :-).

Cheers, Mikkel Meyer Andersen.

[1]: http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/Rhelp08/2009-February/187425.html
[2]: http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/1.5_r1/index.html



[Rd] R on Google Android
Mikkel Meyer Andersen