Hi everyone, I could have posted this on R-devel or the GUI list, however don't feel it's that serious. Hence, decided R-help would be the most appropriate. I'm not so much interested in which is the best user interface for R. Rather which is the best ***platform*** for developing ***new*** user interfaces for R. Noting I'm using the term user interface is a very general sense. (i.e. Can include anything from console/pseudoterminal widgets, to text editors with customised syntax highlighting, to elaborate menus and dialog boxes). Here are my initial thoughts: Emacs Pros: - A lot of computer "experts" use it. - Plus some high profile R people are involved in the development of ESS. - High level of customisation. Emacs Cons: - Need to know Lisp. - Counter intuitive. - It's really ugly. - No decent widget set (which is probably why it's ugly). Eclipse Pros: - It's kind of fashionable and nice looking. Eclipse Cons: - Unnecessarily complicated. - Need to know SWT (and maybe XML too?). - The process for installing (and finding) add on packages, is terrible. Rcmdr Pros and Cons: - I haven't used it for a long time, so can't really comment. - However, I was surprised by how many reverse dependencies it has. So I will assume it has some potential. Other people's thoughts welcome... kind regards -- Charlotte Maia Open Source Developer and Statistician http://sites.google.com/site/maiagx
Hello On 1/3/10, Charlotte Maia <maiagx at gmail.com> wrote:> Rcmdr Pros and Cons: > - I haven't used it for a long time, so can't really comment. > - However, I was surprised by how many reverse dependencies it has. So > I will assume it has some potential. >Rcmdr is probably not the best editor around. However, it is a fairly robust and useful GUI that can be used as a menu-panel to any underlying R terminal, including text editors that can run R (consider using ?Commander start-up options console.output=TRUE and prefixes=c("> ", "+ ", "", "") ). As to the editor choice, I am currently using Geany SVN + Rcmdr (the next Geany release will have the hidden option "send_selection_unsafe" that allows for quick code execution when set to "true" and "Send selection to terminal" bound to a key). Geany is a cross-platform intuitive IDE that understands R files and has an integrated VTE (Terminal) that can run R. Regards Liviu
On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 10:59 PM, Charlotte Maia <maiagx at gmail.com> wrote:> I'm not so much interested in which is the best user interface for R. > Rather which is the best ***platform*** for developing ***new*** user > interfaces for R. > Noting I'm using the term user interface is a very general sense. > (i.e. Can include anything from console/pseudoterminal widgets, to > text editors with customised syntax highlighting, to elaborate menus > and dialog boxes).> Here are my initial thoughts: > > Emacs Pros: > - A lot of computer "experts" use it. > - Plus some high profile R people are involved in the development of ESS. > - High level of customisation. > > Emacs Cons: > - Need to know Lisp. > - Counter intuitive. > - It's really ugly. > - No decent widget set (which is probably why it's ugly). > > Eclipse Pros: > - It's kind of fashionable and nice looking. > > Eclipse Cons: > - Unnecessarily complicated. > - Need to know SWT (and maybe XML too?). > - The process for installing (and finding) add on packages, is terrible. > > Rcmdr Pros and Cons: > - I haven't used it for a long time, so can't really comment. > - However, I was surprised by how many reverse dependencies it has. So > I will assume it has some potential. > > Other people's thoughts welcome...Python + Rpy + Widget set of your choice (Qt or wx would be the front-runners) Pros: cross-platform full, mature, and standard widget set easy integration between R and Python can integrate existing code for editing (e.g. Scintilla) I'd say it was a medium-weight solution - you need R, Python, Rpy, and PyQt/wx but they are all open source so you can distribute them with your code or get your users to install them quite easily. There appears to be an effort to make a direct interface to Qt from R: http://qtinterfaces.r-forge.r-project.org/ but that seems to be in a very early stage, but would let you not need Python. Barry