I saw an ad in the July 2001 Amstat News for a complex sample survey analysis package called Wesvar. The package has what appears to be a useful feature called a "Workbook" by which the user navigates analysis output. This is a hierarchical tree in which the user may click on a part of the analysis (table, regression fit, descriptive stats, etc.) so as to go directly to that output. Recent versions of SAS have something similar. In SAS the title of a graphic may be what appears in the navigation tree, and clicking on that entry will replay the appropriate graph. Has anyone had experience with such GUIs and would comment on productivity or documentation benefits? I wonder what would be the most platform-independent way to implement such a feature, e.g., dynamic html, if it is useful to statisticians. On a related note, I routinely use postscript files and Ghostview for generating and debugging graphics. Has anyone seen an application like Ghostview that is more dynamic? I would like to have a multi-tabbed graphics window that automatically refreshes a graph when the postscript file changes and that graph is visable. Tabs could be identified by file names or by text used in a title( ) call. If postscript were an intrinsic image type supported by html browers this could probably be done elegantly with an html generator. -- Frank E Harrell Jr Prof. of Biostatistics & Statistics Div. of Biostatistics & Epidem. Dept. of Health Evaluation Sciences U. Virginia School of Medicine http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Frank E Harrell Jr <fharrell at virginia.edu> writes:> I saw an ad in the July 2001 Amstat News for a complex sample > survey analysis package called Wesvar. The package has > what appears to be a useful feature called a "Workbook" > by which the user navigates analysis output. This is a > hierarchical tree in which the user may click on a part > of the analysis (table, regression fit, descriptive stats, > etc.) so as to go directly to that output. Recent versions > of SAS have something similar. In SAS the title of a > graphic may be what appears in the navigation tree, and > clicking on that entry will replay the appropriate graph. > > Has anyone had experience with such GUIs and would comment > on productivity or documentation benefits? I wonder > what would be the most platform-independent way to > implement such a feature, e.g., dynamic html, if it is > useful to statisticians.I've tried the SAS stuff (the Analyst application). It's a fairly neat idea, but you do need to put in a substantial effort to relabel the stuff and delete any "junk" output, or find yourself with a bunch of litle icons all having similar generic names like "Probability plot" or "ANOVA output" (I forget the exact names, but you get the picture). There was a strange division between SAS programming and Analyst in that *only* code executed from Analyst would go into the project tree, nicely incorporating the SAS code that Analyst had written for you, but excuting SAS code directly would go to a *different* tree, which did *not* include the code that was executed. The version I tried (SAS 8.0) was also bug-ridden beyond belief. Suddenly, the system would get itself into a state where the tree could no longer be saved, detracting rather badly from the usefulness. They might have fixed that in the meantime though. The newer Enterprise Guide stuff is reportedly neater, but we never succeeded in getting it to run on any of our PC SAS installations (seemingly, it was not prepared for our particular network configuration). It's the sort of thing that it might be easy to code in Tcl/Tk, and which I do have some plans of returning to .. in the fullness of time . when other obligations allow .. etc.... -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3 c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
> From: Paul Murrell > > From: Frank E Harrell Jr > > I saw an ad in the July 2001 Amstat News for a complex sample > > survey analysis package called Wesvar. The package has > > what appears to be a useful feature called a "Workbook" > > by which the user navigates analysis output. This is a > > hierarchical tree in which the user may click on a part > > of the analysis (table, regression fit, descriptive stats, > > etc.) so as to go directly to that output. Recent versions > > of SAS have something similar. In SAS the title of a > > graphic may be what appears in the navigation tree, and > > clicking on that entry will replay the appropriate graph. > > > > Has anyone had experience with such GUIs and would comment > > on productivity or documentation benefits? I wonder > > what would be the most platform-independent way to > > implement such a feature, e.g., dynamic html, if it is > > useful to statisticians. >Actually, I'm in the process of looking at building something of this nature. Comments and suggestions about design principles, as well as tools would be appreciated. -Greg LEGAL NOTICE Unless expressly stated otherwise, this message is confidential and may be privileged. It is intended for the addressee(s) only. Access to this E-mail by anyone else is unauthorized. If you are not an addressee, any disclosure or copying of the contents of this E-mail or any action taken (or not taken) in reliance on it is unauthorized and may be unlawful. If you are not an addressee, please inform the sender immediately. -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._