> Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 10:25:24 +0100 (BST)
> From: Dave Lucy <D.J.Lucy at Bradford.ac.uk>
> To: r-help <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
> Subject: [R] Re: GUIs
>
>
> > > > formalities from one time to the next. So they get scared of
the
> > > > prospect of staring empty-minded at the R prompt.
>
> > Remember that there is product `not unlike R'' that does have
an extensive
> > menu/dialogs front-end, so the pros and cons of GUI to S are not
> > unexplored. And I am in favour of one for R, but I do not give it
high
> > priority. (It really would be man-months of work.) We would need to
sort
> > out a cross-platform GUI interface design and have that running first
or
> > one ends up with a Windows-only GUI (as happened with all the examples
> > above).
>
> Personally I''m against GUI''s - particularly for teaching,
but can
> appreciate why people who are occasional users may wish to have one. I
> think that what we are really describing here is an assisted batch type
> processing, where one gets menu items more as a reminder as to what sort
> of things are availible for each task.
>
> One of the easiest interfaces I have seen was the old DOS SPSS (V4 I
> think) which had menus which when an item was selected would produce a
> dialogue for the function allowing the user to enter parameters. Upon
> closure the dialogue would shut pasting the appropriate command line into
> the scratch-pad. The scratch-pad would then act as a batch file. This led
> to an easy uptake of batch file composition. As I remember there was also
> an object listing from which objects could be selected as function
> dialogue items.
>
> Any thoughts,
That''s exactly what I am working on for Rgui for 1.1.0, as a demo
of how to use the menu/dialog system. A completed menu item submits
a command that appears in the console and gets saved in the session log
(which can be saved in a separate file).
--
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
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