Dear R-announce list members,
I've submitted a new package to CRAN, Rcmdr, which provides a
cross-platform basic-statistics GUI for R. Rcmdr is based on the tcltk
package and uses only standard Tk widgets. It therefore runs under Windows
if Tcl/Tk support is installed with R, although it requires the
single-document interface (SDI). I've tested Rcmdr with Windows and Red Hat
Linux; others have reported that it works on other Linux/Unix and Macintosh
systems (the latter under X11).
The R-Commander GUI consists of a window containing several menus, buttons,
and information fields. The Commander window also contains a log/script
box. The R-Commander menus are easily configurable through a text file. The
menu tree and additional information are available at
<http://www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/>.
The menus lead to simple dialog boxes, the general contents of which are
more or less obvious from the names of the menu items. These boxes have a
common structure, including a help button leading to the help page for a
relevant function.
Commands generated via dialogs are posted to the R session window, along
with printed output, and to the log window. Lines in the log window may be
edited and (re)submitted for execution. Logs can be saved and reloaded.
My object in designing and implementing this GUI was to cover the content
of a basic-statistics course. The target text was Moore's The Basic
Practice of Statistics, Second Edition (Freeman, 2000), which is the text
that I currently use for a two-semester introduction to statistics for
undergraduate sociology majors. The R Commander implements the content of
this text plus some additional material (e.g., linear and generalized
linear models). As a result of several suggestions that I received, the
coverage is now larger than originally envisaged, and I'm happy to
entertain suggestions for further additions -- keeping in mind, however,
the intended limited scope of the project.
Until the package appears on CRAN, you can download the package source and
a Windows binary from my web site. The Rcmdr package mostly uses functions
in the base and recommended packages; it also uses some functions in my car
package.
John
-----------------------------------------------------
John Fox
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M4
email: jfox at mcmaster.ca
phone: 905-525-9140x23604
web: www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox
