A binary distribution of R 1.2.0 to run on
Windows 95, 98, NT4.0 and 2000 on Intel/clone chips is available.
(now at ftp://ftp.stat.unipd.it/users/guido/RWin, from tomorrow,
at CRAN)
guido masarotto
(for the R-core team)
Windows-specific changes to R
============================This version has been compiled against msvcrt.dll
not crtdll.dll.
This gives small speed increases and generally more accurate results.
Packages compiled against crtdll.dll will still work (as far as we are
aware), but for best results should be re-compiled. (A few packages
need to be re-compiled for 1.2.0 on all platforms, and any that used
malloc directly need to be recompiled on this one.)
This release has a number of changes to bring its behaviour closer to that
of Unix versions of R.
- The default font for graphics on windows(), win.printer() and
win.metafile() devices is now Arial: the font numbers for the
Times New Roman and Arial families have been interchanged.
- The history is only saved when the workspace is (to be compatible with
Unix versions of R) and whether it is restored is controlled by
option --no-restore-history (implied by --no-restore and --vanilla):
the default remains to restore.
- Environment variables R_HISTFILE and R_HISTSIZE can be set to specify
the name of the commands history file (default .Rhistory)
and its maximum size (in lines, default 512).
- More locale support is now enabled where supported by the version of
Windows in use. It means that sorting and comparison of character
strings will be locale-specific. You may not want this (the sort
order in `English_United Kingdom' is aAbB..., for example) and
setting Sys.setlocale("LC_COLLATE", "C") should give the
previous
behaviour. Further, users of Windows 9x/ME should be able to use
their native character set for the names of R objects (as NT/2000
users always have: this is caused by the change to msvcrt.dll).
(For the benefit of those used to Unix, LC_ALL can be set in the
environment, although this is not usually supported by Windows,
and setting individual LC_* such as LC_COLLATE will also work.)
- It is possible to make DVI and HTML versions of the manuals:
see file INSTALL in the source distribution.
- New utility Rcmd.exe to emulate R CMD : see below.
- unlink() now works the same way on Windows and Unix. Thus on
Windows it no longer deletes empty directories, but has a new
argument recursive=TRUE to delete directories (empty or not).
- The startup code looks for .Renviron, a file pointed to by
environment variable R_ENVIRON and then .Renviron in the home
directory. This file can contain lines of the forms NAME=value
and NAME=${NAME1-value} to take the value of NAME1 if set (and not
empty), otherwise `value'.
- make check no longer makes R, just runs the tests (as make test
always has). Tests are run in the C locale.
Gui changes
-----------
- There are new console menu items `Load History' on the File menu and
`Clear console' on the Edit menu. (The current line is not cleared.)
- The menu items `Load/Save Image' are now called `Load/Save
Workspace'.
- The Print menu item on the File menu of a console or pager now prints
the selection if there is one, and the whole (saved) contents otherwise.
- There is a new `Save to File' item on the File menu of a console or
pager which saves the selection if there is one, and the whole
(saved) contents otherwise.
- The Rgui console now uses the same history mechanism as Rterm. The
history limit is now just on the number of lines (rather than on the
number of lines and the total size). The mechanism has been altered
so that Rterm records repeated lines (as Rgui always did).
- There are some additional command-line editing commands in Rgui: see
the Help | Console information screen. (There is also one
addition, ^W, in Rterm: see README.rterm.)
- Selection works slightly differently: if the selection extends beyond
the last character on the line the (invisible) CRLF is made part of
the selection, but not if only up to the last character is selected.
- The data editor is no longer modal (which seems not to have worked
properly in the GraphApp toolkit) and this allows its popups to be
modal.
- The size of the console scroll buffer can be set in file Rconsole,
and resized (upwards) via the GUI preferences editor.
- The GUI console copes much better with receiving output (e.g. from
tcltk interactive functions) during input.
New utilities for preparing packages
------------------------------------
There are several new utilities in the rw1020sp.zip distribution.
The utilities Rd2dvi.sh Rd2txt Rdconv Rdindex Sd2Rd are no longer
batch files but accessed through a new front-end Rcmd.exe, so if this
is in your path (otherwise use ...\rw1020\bin\Rcmd) you can use
Rcmd Rd2dvi.sh [options] files
Rcmd Rd2txt file
Rcmd Rdconv [options] file
Rcmd Rdindex [options] files
Rcmd Sd2Rd [options] file
There are new utilities INSTALL, REMOVE, SHLIB which can be used
to install a source package, remove a package and make a DLL, and
implementations of the Unix R utilities BATCH, build and
check. Invoke these by
Rcmd INSTALL [options] pkgdir(s)
Rcmd REMOVE [options] pkg(s)
Rcmd SHLIB [options] file(s)
Rcmd build [options] pkgdir(s)
Rcmd check [options] pkgdir(s)
Rcmd BATCH [options] infile [outfile]
Use option --help with any of these for fuller details.
The default for options("papersize") is set according to the locale,
and so might be set to "letter" under US or Canadian versions of
Windows.
Rterm in interactive use sets the title of the window it is running
in, and unsets it when it terminates.
The Windows memory manager proved to be (far) too slow to work with
the new generational garbage collector, so it has been replaced. The
current memory manager rarely releases memory back to Windows (but
reuses memory very efficiently) so total memory usage will often grow
slowly over the course of a session. Memory used for transient large
objects will normally be returned at garbage collection. (Once memory
usage has gone over the 256Mb of address space that is initially
reserved, it is unlikely to be reduced much, but the allocated memory
will be reused.) You can compile R to use the Windows memory manager
if you need to.
New function memory.size() showing the amount of memory currently in
use or the maximum that has been used.
New command-line option --max-mem-size to set the maximum memory
allocation: it has a minimum allowed value of 10M. This is intended
to catch attempts to allocate excessive amounts of memory which may
cause other processes to run out of resources. The default is the
smaller of the amount of physical RAM in the machine and 256Mb.
DLLs for packages (including standard packages supplied with R)
automatically gain version information when compiled under this
version. (Use the Version tab on the Properties dialog box to see it,
or the new function DLL.version() within R.)
Windows (.hlp) help files now have hyperlinks to other objects within
the same package.
The windows() graphics device has a new argument `record' to set the
initial state of the recording flag, and this defaults to the setting
of the option "graphics.record" (and that defaults to FALSE).
The windows() graphics device has new options for what happens when it
is resized, which can be set from the command line of from the menu.
See ?windows for details.
New function bringToTop() to bring a graphics window to the top of the
windows stack (useful from menu actions, ...).
If the options setting for a pager or editor (or the editor argument
to edit.default) is a path containing a space, it is automatically
quoted if not already quoted.
The range of allowed text sizes in a windows/win.print device has been
increased, so smaller values of cex will work. (The smallest allowed
text size is 2pt not 8pt.)
Interactive use of Rterm.exe on Windows 2000 systems is now possible
(including under ESS).
Better rendering of wide (lwd > 1) and dashed (lty != "solid")
lines
on the windows/win.print device.
The installer rwinst.exe when first asked to install a package tries
to find a current installation of R, first from R_HOME if set in the
environment, then from the PATH (it looks for ...\rw1020\bin).
make pkgcheck-foo will unzip zipped example files if needed.
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