[R] Dialog boxes

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Morris, Jeffrey [OCDUS] wrote:

> I have been wanting to ask about a future feature but was
> reluctant to start a feature request fest...but since someone
> else asked...First a belated congrats to everyone on the 
> development team.  I've been following this since the beginning
> when it was suppose to fill a gap in available Mac software. 
>      But back to features.  One of the things I would really like to
> see and limits my spreading R internally in my company, is
> the ability to create menus and dialog boxes.  It is very simple
> to do this in XLisp-Stat with a few commands, and I used to create
> applications all the time for people who were doing routine analyses.
> I would like to know if it would be a big programming effort to have this
> feature in R.  If I knew anything about programming I'd offer to
> help, but I don't so can only vote and hope.

I am not at all sure what you mean. On Windows R does have a pretty general
scheme for adding menus, and a simple scheme for dialog boxes.

So, do you want this on Unix, or what more do you want on Windows? My
earlier reply that you quoted explicitly said that a fully programmable
GUI-builder kit a la S-PLUS 2000 took man-years of effort.  I also am not
at all sure that is the best way to build a user-friendly front-end, as
using Visual Basic and (D)COM is much more flexible (and uses a language
lots of application programmers know).  We have taken some pains to make R
for Windows easy to embed in other applications.

You are in a company, and I fail to understand why if you want the features
that S-PLUS offers (the `PLUS' in short) you do not consider it.  So maybe
I am missing the point.

[ earlier reply from me deleted ]

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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