From rossini@biostat.washington.edu  Tue Nov 16 22:54:54 1999
From: rossini@biostat.washington.edu (A.J. Rossini)
Date: 16 Nov 1999 14:54:54 -0800
Subject: (G)UI for R and in R
In-Reply-To: Lyndon Drake's message of "Wed, 17 Nov 1999 11:38:00 +1300"
References: <199911152047.PAA18728@infiniti.ece.cmu.edu> <6r4sen9zrx.fsf@franz.stat.wisc.edu> <19991117103919.C13694@stat1.stat.auckland.ac.nz> <87bt8um727.fsf@alpha.cfas.washington.edu> <19991117113800.D13694@stat1.stat.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <87u2mmkpxd.fsf@alpha.cfas.washington.edu>


>>>>> "LD" == Lyndon Drake <lyndon@stat.auckland.ac.nz> writes:

    LD> Based on this, I'd say that it will be pretty difficult to
    LD> replicate ESS's functionality.  I guess some people will be
    LD> sticking with Emacs (strange people... ;-).

But you should be able to get object completions and the emacs/vi
keybindings :-).  Those are the basic needs...

Syntax highlighting would be nice, if easily possible.

    >> Now for some less cynical feedback: Looking at your XML code,
    >> it'd be nice to have a means of bringing up an example, i.e. a
    >> filled out screen with an additional text window which
    >> described what could be done (you do/are having a
    >> help-feature-window-thingy, right)?
    >>
    >> I.e. create a button on the window which would show examples
    >> for read.table for a tab-sep'd file, CSV file, etc...  This
    >> would literally be the R-ex files GUI'd up (gooey'd up... I
    >> like that one, and so would my 2-year old :-), with a text
    >> window described what each or a selected one would do.
    >>
    >> Tres cool, and we can't really do that to the same extent with
    >> ESS (well, we can dump code from the help buffer, but it's
    >> really run, not an example!).

    LD> Very cool idea.  I'll have a think about how to do it (finding
    LD> the time to actually implement it is another matter).

Actually, it isn't too hard.  Read up on what XSL (the XML
Stylesheets) can do.  Basically, 

XML interface ->  what you described, under one path (my-interface.xml)
	      ->  the wizards/examples, under another path 
		  (my-example-and-wizards.xml)

and then the 2 new *.xml files are used for corresponding stuff...

Best of all, all the information is there in the documentation!  (the
R-ex stuff, I mean).

The catch?  You need an XSLT engine written in C (or C++).  I think
there are a few in C++ (I know there are for Python and Java) but have 
no pointers.  

For a decent powerpoint example on XSLT which I found incredible lucid
(it's GPL'd -- weird notion, MS formatted information publically
available), see:
	http://www.xfront.org/xsl.html
and follow the links...

best,
-tony

-- 
A.J. Rossini			Research Assistant Professor of Biostatistics 
Center for AIDS Research/HMC	Biostatistics/Univ. of Washington
Box 359931			Box 357232
206-731-3647 (3693=fax)		206-543-1044 (3286=fax)
rossini@u.washington.edu	rossini@biostat.washington.edu
http://www.biostat.washington.edu/~rossini/

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(G)UI for R and in R
A.J. Rossini