R help - Mar 1999 - R or S+ !

Hi all !

I'm sure this is a question that annoys some of you but I'm really
needing help on this !

I've been using R for about 1 year now. I'm a biologist, so stats are a
tool for my research not the end itself. During this time I've enjoyed
working with R but the graphical part of it drives me crazy and the
small possibilities in terms of reading some file formats also causes me
problems.

Two weeks ago I've had the chance of bying a license for Splus 5 for
linux. After some trouble with their representant because of a stupid
license scheme I've managed to install and work with it. The things I
needed are know working: I can access different files formats (at lest
they say so) and the graphs are better. On the other way the program
it's not so linux integrated as I thougth, it uses emacs or vi styles
(wich I hate) instead of the updownrightleft keys, it has a strange
system of files and it's not compatible with the m$win versions (wich
would allow me to work together with other scientists that use m$win.

Know I'm quite confused about my choice R or Splus !!

Can you give me some opinions on this ?!

thanks

ernesto
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Maybe you have already, but: have you told the R-help list (or the
R-devel list) what your "wish list" for R is?  Specifically, what file
formats do you need to read, and what don't you like about R graphics?
(The only thing I know about that is different between R and S+ graphics
is the 3-D plotting capabilities, which are supposedly in progress ...
although admittedly I work with an old (3.?) version of S+.)  If you
specify your needs, someone might help you out.
   R may not be as complete as S+, but it sure is easier to change if you
don't like it.

   Ben

Benjamin Bolker          Dep't of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
ben at eno.princeton.edu    Princeton University
tel: (609) 258-6886,     fax: (609) 258-1334

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On Mon, 22 Mar 1999, [iso-8859-1] José Ernesto Jardim wrote:

[snip]
> 
> Two weeks ago I've had the chance of bying a license for Splus 5 for
> linux. After some trouble with their representant because of a stupid
> license scheme I've managed to install and work with it. The things I
> needed are know working: I can access different files formats (at lest
> they say so) and the graphs are better. On the other way the program
> it's not so linux integrated as I thougth, it uses emacs or vi styles
> (wich I hate) instead of the updownrightleft keys, it has a strange
> system of files and it's not compatible with the m$win versions (wich
> would allow me to work together with other scientists that use m$win.
> 
Perhaps a better way, if your colleagues are unfortunate enough to have to
work in M$win, is to get VMware.  This sits on a host system (Linux or, if
you have to, NT) and enables one or more virtual machines to be set up,
each completely independent of the other.  It therefore enables you to run
at more or less full speed any i86 operating system - W95, W98, NT, Linux,
FreeBSD, Solaris Intel, DOS, etc (are there any more?).  Thus you could
have NT on Linux or W95 on Linux, different flavours of Linux running all
on the same machine, a few proper DOS machines, a FreeBSD for testing, or
whatever you want.  It sets up a virtual platform sharing all devices as
necessary and is seen as a separate machine with it's own IP number etc
both within the host system and by any external machines that are
permitted to see it.

It is commercial but the price is quite modest and much less than the
difference in prices for W95 and Linux implementations for certain
software such as S+.  Thus you kill two birds for the price of one!

Check out www.vmware.com - beta test and evaluation versions are currently
available.  It is due for launch in May and everyone that has used it says
it works very  well.  I haven't loaded it yet because I have to rearrange
my disk partitions but I will shortly.  Promise!

John

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