[R] Rcmdr Plugin and menus.txt

[Charilaos Skiadas]

Thanks John, no hurry.

I tried to debug it a little bit, without much success. Two things I  
discovered:
1) The exact same lines work just fine if I place them in the Rcmdr- 
menus.txt file in the Rcmdr package (and add the "testOne" function  
also.)
2) While trying to do debug(Commander), the thing I noticed is that,  
when reading items from the menus.txt file, the function seems to  
process them in the opposite order. So it starts from the last item  
and moves up (well, I don't know if it would move up since it crashes  
in the absence of the psychMenu object). It seems the problem might  
be with the line:
Menus <- addMenus(Menus)
When examining Menus, I noticed that my new commands were added at  
the beginning of the Menus data frame, and in a messed up order:

Browse[1]> Menus[1:20,1:3]
      type  menuOrItem operationOrParent
8    item   psychMenu           cascade
1    menu   psychMenu           topMenu
4    menu testTwoMenu         psychMenu
5    item testTwoMenu           command
6    item testTwoMenu           command
7    item testTwoMenu           command
2    item   psychMenu           command
2100 menu    fileMenu           topMenu
3    item    fileMenu           command
410  item    fileMenu           command
510  item    fileMenu           command
610  item    fileMenu           command
710  item    fileMenu           command
810  item    fileMenu           command
9    item    fileMenu           command
10   menu    exitMenu          fileMenu
11   item    exitMenu           command
12   item    exitMenu           command
13   item    fileMenu           cascade
14   item     topMenu           cascade


I would hazard to guess that the problem is with the call "Menus <-  
insertRows(Menus, line, where)"  in line 866 of Rcmdr. But at that  
point things got a bit too "technical" for me. Hope this helps narrow  
the problem down a bit.

Thanks for the preprint. It is nicely written, though it didn't shed  
any light on this problem.

Haris Skiadas
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Hanover College

On Nov 1, 2007, at 3:32 PM, John Fox wrote:

> Dear Haris,
>
> I'll take a look at this as soon as I have a chance, probably not  
> until
> tomorrow. In the meantime I've attached a "preprint" of an article  
> that
> describes how to write plug-ins. Perhaps you'll find that helpful.  
> (I don't
> know whether it will go through r-help, but you should receive the  
> direct
> email.)
>
> Regards,
>  John
>
> --------------------------------
> John Fox, Professor
> Department of Sociology
> McMaster University
> Hamilton, Ontario
> Canada L8S 4M4
> 905-525-9140x23604
> http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox
> --------------------------------
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org
>> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Charilaos Skiadas
>> Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 2:53 PM
>> To: R-help help
>> Subject: [R] Rcmdr Plugin and menus.txt
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> 	I'm trying to write a plugin for R Commander, following the model of
>
>> the TeachingDemos plugin. I am struggling trying to even add items by
>> editing the menus.txt file. I would welcome any help from anyone who
>> has messed with it.
>> Essentially the problem I am having is: I cannot create a submenu  
>> to a
>> newly created menu. Here is what the menus.txt file looks like:
>>
>> #   type    menu/item      operation/parent
>> label                              command/menu
>> activation    install?
>> menu    psychMenu       topMenu
>> ""                                      ""
>> ""                      ""
>> item    psychMenu       command         "Test"
>> testOne         ""                      ""
>> item    topMenu         cascade
>> "Psych"                                 psychMenu
>> ""                      ""
>> menu    testTwoMenu      psychMenu
>> ""                                    ""
>> ""                  ""
>> item    testTwoMenu      command         "Binomial
>> distributions"                testOne
>> ""                      ""
>> item    testTwoMenu      command         "Normal
>> distributions"                  testOne
>> ""                      ""
>> item    testTwoMenu      command         "t
>> distributions"                       testOne
>> ""                      ""
>> item    psychMenu   cascade     "Submenu"
>> testTwoMenu                  ""                      ""
>>
>>
>> I would expect the above to create:
>> 1) A top level menu called "psychMenu", with the title "Psych"
>> 2) An item in this menu with title "Test"
>> 3) A second item, called "Submenu", and internally called
>> "testTwoMenu", which is itself a submenu.
>> 4) Three items in that submenu.
>>
>> The difference between this and the example is basically, that in the
>> example, the testTwoMenu is created as a submenu of the
>> distributionsMenu. If I change those last five lines above to read:
>>
>> menu    testTwoMenu      distributionsMenu
>> ""                                    ""
>> ""                  ""
>> item    testTwoMenu      command         "Binomial
>> distributions"                testOne
>> ""                      ""
>> item    testTwoMenu      command         "Normal
>> distributions"                  testOne
>> ""                      ""
>> item    testTwoMenu      command         "t
>> distributions"                       testOne
>> ""                      ""
>> item    distributionsMenu   cascade     "Submenu"
>> testTwoMenu                  ""                      ""
>>
>>
>> Then everything works fine and the submenu is created inside the
>> distributions menu. On the other hand, my original code gives me the
>> error:
>>
>> Warning in max(which((Menus[, "operationOrParent"] ==
>> "cascade") & (Menus[,  :
>> 	 no non-missing arguments to max; returning -Inf Error in eval(expr,
>
>> envir, enclos) : object "psychMenu" not found
>>
>>
>> I should point out further, that keeping only the first three lines
>> from my original code also works fine, and creates the new menu  
>> and an
>> item in it. The problem seems to arise when I try to create a submenu
>> in a menu I have just created.
>>
>> Any thoughts how to accomplish this, or rather what am I doing wrong?
>>
>> Should this go to R-SIG-GUI instead? Or is there another list more
>> appropriate?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Haris Skiadas
>> Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Hanover College
>>