R devel - Feb 2010 - Announce: Speicial issue of the JSS on Graphical User Interfaces for R

Announce

Special issue of the Journal of Statistical Software on

Graphical User Interfaces for R

Editors: Pedro Valero-Mora and Ruben Ledesma

Since it original paper from Gentleman and Ihaka was published, R has 
managed to gain an ever-increasing percentage of academic and 
professional statisticians but the spread of its use among novice and 
occasional users of statistics have not progressed at the same pace. 
Among the reasons for this relative lack of impact, the lack of a GUI or 
point and click interface is one of the causes most widely mentioned. 
But, however, in the last few years, this situation has been quietly 
changing and a number of projects have equipped R with a number of 
different GUIs, ranging from the very simple to the more advanced, and 
providing the casual user with what could be still a new source of 
trouble: choosing what is the GUI for him. We may have moved from the 
"too few" situation to the "too many" situation


This special issue of the JSS intends as one of its main goals to offer 
a general overview of the different GUIs currently available for R. 
Thus, we think that somebody trying to find its way among different 
alternatives may find useful it as starting point. However, we do not 
want to stop in a mere listing but we want to offer a bit of a more 
general discussion about what could be good GUIs for R (and how to build 
them). Therefore, we want to see papers submitted that discuss the whole 
concept of GUI in R, what elements it should include (or not), how this 
could be achieved, and, why not, if it is actually needed at all. 
Finally, despite the high success of R, this does not mean other systems 
may not treasure important features that we would like to see in R. 
Indeed, descriptions of these nice features that we do not have in R but 
are in other systems could be another way of driving the future progress 
of GUIs for R.

In summary, we envision papers for this special issue on GUIs for R in 
the following categories:

- General discussions on GUIs for statistics, and for R.

- Implementing GUI toolboxes for R so others can program GUIs with them.

- R GUIs examples (with two subcategories, in the desktop or in the cloud).

- Is there life beyond R? What features have other systems that R does 
not have and why R needs them.

-- 
Dr. Pedro M. Valero Mora (valerop@uv.es)
Facultad de Psicología
Universitat de Valencia
Mob. 669842979 Ext.93564
http://www.uv.es/valerop

SINTEC-INTRAS
Driving Simulation and Human Factors of New Technologies in the Vehicle
Institute of Traffic and Road Safety
Tlf. (34) 96 3393880 (Interno: 93910)
http://www.uv.es/sintec

METHODOLOGY OF BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCES
Data Visualization and Computational Statistics
Tlf. (34) 96 3983564 (Interno: 83564)
http://www.uv.es/visualstats/Book/
http://www.uv.es/prodat

CHECK THE VISUAL STATISTICS BOOK!
http://www.uv.es/visualstats/Book/


	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]