I'm in the final week of teaching a course to beginners using R and S-Plus. Since I forbade the students from using the "point-and-click" interface in S-Plus, they've become reasonably proficient at using the command line in both programs. Students really like the speed and ease-of-use of R for the vast majority of their projects. I think they'd switch to R completely if they could get: 1) trellis graphics (I've encouraged them to try grid and lattice). 2) the full complement of multiple comparisons capabilities found in Splus' multicomp. 3) the more comprehensive discriminant analysis routines in S-Plus 2000 and 6.0 - the ones with all the inferential testing as well as the classification results (they use the MASS routines now. The S-Plus version has more options to study the separations themselves). 4) Scripting capabilities. Of these 4, their priority is for R to have S-Plus scripting capability. I realize that they can get this using Emacs with ESS, but I found it sufficiently daunting to teach rank beginners how to use R/S-Plus proficiently in 10 weeks that teaching them how to use Emacs/ESS at the same time scares the bejesus out of me. I haven't seen any mention of this as a development priority. Is any of this on anyone's "to do" list? Thanks for such an incredibly robust program. Keep up the great work. ====================Dr. Marc R. Feldesman Professor and Chairman Anthropology Department Portland State University 1721 SW Broadway Portland, Oregon 97201 email: feldesmanm at pdx.edu phone: 503-725-3081 fax: 503-725-3905 http://web.pdx.edu/~h1mf PGP Key Available On Request ===================== "Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power." P.J. O'Rourke Powered by Optiplochoerus and Windows 2000 (scary isn't it?) -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Students who are using R and S-Plus under Windows may want to try out Uwe Ligges's plugin for the WinEdt text editor. They can find it at http://rsync.r-project.org/pub/R/ R-WinEdt can be used for coding in R and S-Plus. In fact, it makes it quite easy to switch back and forth between R and S-Plus, for those who need to use Trellis graphics and the Hmisc package. I find the R-WinEdt interface to be wonderfully simple and elegant. Note that the WinEdt editor is not free, so your students will have to pay $30 US after a trial period of a month. WinEdt is also a very fine LaTeX editor. -Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marc Feldesman" <feldesmanm at pdx.edu> To: <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch> Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 5:31 PM Subject: [R] Scripting capabilities for R> I'm in the final week of teaching a course to beginners using R and > S-Plus. Since I forbade the students from using the "point-and-click" > interface in S-Plus, they've become reasonably proficient at using the > command line in both programs.<snip>> > 4) Scripting capabilities. > > Of these 4, their priority is for R to have S-Plus scripting capability.I> realize that they can get this using Emacs with ESS, but I found it > sufficiently daunting to teach rank beginners how to use R/S-Plus > proficiently in 10 weeks that teaching them how to use Emacs/ESS at the > same time scares the bejesus out of me. > > I haven't seen any mention of this as a development priority. Is any of > this on anyone's "to do" list? > > Thanks for such an incredibly robust program. Keep up the great work. ><snip> -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
>Of these 4, their priority is for R to have S-Plus scripting capability. I >realize that they can get this using Emacs with ESS, but I found it >sufficiently daunting to teach rank beginners how to use R/S-Plus >proficiently in 10 weeks that teaching them how to use Emacs/ESS at the >same time scares the bejesus out of me.There is WinEd (there is a reference in CRAN). I personnally use Textpad which also offer a synthax color highlighting, and many other nice feature for R/Splus scripts (see http://www.textpad.com). Both of these program ar shareware... they are not free, and they work under Windows. I am interested by your list of students wishes, since I am developing a GPL user interface for math/stat calculation engines (among others: R and Splus, but also Octave, Scilab and Mathematica,...). It will run under Windows only (for the moment), but will be able to interact with calculation engines on other computers in the network, including Unix/Linux boxes. Do your students asked for some more specific features? If you want more infos about my project, see http://www.sciviews.org. You won't find code or program yet for this user interface, and the project is not going very fast since I have other priorities now (see also http://www.sciviews.org/_passtec), but a first working version will be out probably next year. It will provide similar features as the Matlab 6.0 interface, but with the opportunity to interface several calculation engines at a time. Script editing/debugging with synthax highlighting, quick help tips, autocompletion, etc... is already done. I think your students would love it!!! Cheers, Philippe Grosjean ...........]<(({?<...............<?}))><............................... ) ) ) ) ) __ __ ( ( ( ( ( |__) | _ ) ) ) ) ) | hilippe |__)rosjean ( ( ( ( ( Marine Biol. Lab., ULB, Belgium ) ) ) ) ) __ ( ( ( ( ( |\ /| |__) ) ) ) ) ) | \/ |ariculture & |__)iostatistics ( ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ) ) e-mail: phgrosje at ulb.ac.be or phgrosjean at sciviews.org ( ( ( ( ( SciViews project coordinator (http://www.sciviews.org) ) ) ) ) ) tel: 00-32-2-650.29.70 (lab), 00-32-2-673.31.33 (home) ( ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ) ) "I'm 100% confident that p is between 0 and 1" ( ( ( ( ( L. Gonick & W. Smith (1993) ) ) ) ) ) ....................................................................... -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
On Tue, 29 May 2001, Marc Feldesman wrote:> I'm in the final week of teaching a course to beginners using R and > S-Plus. Since I forbade the students from using the "point-and-click" > interface in S-Plus, they've become reasonably proficient at using the > command line in both programs. > > Students really like the speed and ease-of-use of R for the vast majority > of their projects. I think they'd switch to R completely if they could get: > > 1) trellis graphics (I've encouraged them to try grid and lattice).Too early, I think. It is Devel software and fails in a lot of my examples (sometime fails, but often does not give the intended output which is hard for those who have not tried Trellis to know). Not a criticism: those of us who used Trellis 1 know how first versions go.> 2) the full complement of multiple comparisons capabilities found in > Splus' multicomp. > 3) the more comprehensive discriminant analysis routines in S-Plus 2000 > and 6.0 - the ones with all the inferential testing as well as the > classification results (they use the MASS routines now. The S-Plus version > has more options to study the separations themselves).That would be a very small interest (I know it is yours) as for classification there are almost always better ways. [Historical note: S-PLUS users lived without all of those for many years, and the last is only in 2000 and 6.0 I believe. Already R has quite a bit more than S-PLUS 3.4 of 1996, but also a few gaps relative to that.]> 4) Scripting capabilities. > > Of these 4, their priority is for R to have S-Plus scripting capability. I > realize that they can get this using Emacs with ESS, but I found it > sufficiently daunting to teach rank beginners how to use R/S-Plus > proficiently in 10 weeks that teaching them how to use Emacs/ESS at the > same time scares the bejesus out of me. > > I haven't seen any mention of this as a development priority. Is any of > this on anyone's "to do" list?Not really sure what you mean here. R is itself a scripting language, so in the most common use of `scripting' we have it. Do you mean the S-PLUS for Windows `script windows'? If so which aspects? We already have the ability to display code and to submit from it, which is what was most asked for. (Use Display file from the File menu, highlight code, use Ctrl-V or the menus.) Brian -- 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 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Dear Prof. Ripley: At 07:58 AM 30/05/2001 +0100, Prof Brian D Ripley wrote:>Not really sure what you mean here. R is itself a scripting language, >so in the most common use of `scripting' we have it. Do you mean >the S-PLUS for Windows `script windows'? If so which aspects? >We already have the ability to display code and to submit from it, >which is what was most asked for. (Use Display file from the File menu, >highlight code, use Ctrl-V or the menus.)I'm sure that the reference is to the script window. I've been using Uwe Ligges's WinEdt extensions, which work very well, but it would be nice if students didn't have to buy or install additional software to get some of this functionality. In particular, the ability to perform basic editing functions in the file-display window would be convenient. John ________________________________ John Fox Department of Sociology McMaster University email: jfox at McMaster.ca web: www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox ________________________________ -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
A bit tardy, perhaps, but here is an NEdit macro for Linux that will
display help
on a selected keyword in an R command file that is being edited.
Select Preferences|Default Settings|Customize menus|Macro menu..
Define a New macro named, for example, R help
Copy the attached macro into the macro editing window at the bottom
Edit the macro by uncommenting the appropriate lines and changing the R
home
directory
Apply the macro
Highlight an R command in the editor and select Macro|R help
You should be able to get either HTML or "text" help in a separate
window. I
welcome any comments and suggestions.
I have worked out a way to submit selected commands from NEdit to R via
batch
mode, but it is really clunky and I'll refine it to run in the R window
if
possible. Stay tuned.
Jim
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# NEdit macro to display R help
# NOTE: either change the top search directory to R_HOME
# or create a symbolic link, e.g. /usr/local/R -> /usr/local/R-n.n.n
# this line finds HTML help files
helpfind = "find /usr/local/R/library -name " get_selection()
".html"
# this line finds "text" help files
# helpfind = "find /usr/local/R/library -name " get_selection()
helpfile = shell_command(helpfind," ")
if(helpfile != "") {
# the line below will call KDE's 'kdehelp' to display HTML help
help_command = "kdehelp " helpfile
# the line below will call 'lynx' in KDE's 'konsole' to
display HTML help
# help_command = "konsole -e lynx " helpfile
# the line below will call 'less' in an 'xterm' to display
"text" help
# help_command = "xterm -e less " helpfile
shell_command(help_command," ")
}