Future directions of R for Windows?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Now rw0640 is released, we have achieved our main goal of being able to
build easily new versions from the Unix sources, and the R functionality is
as complete a copy as we can achieve easily.  We are now thinking of
possible enhancements, and would like your comments on the following ideas.

   o   Use a standard MDI interface like MS Office's, say. Would you 
       prefer an MDI interface to the current one, and if so is the
       `standard' `look and feel' important?

   o   Replace the help system by standard Windows help files. Would
       you like this instead of text help, html help or both?
       
   o   rw0640 implements offline printing via latex.  Do you anticipate
       using this?  (It needs lots of extra files.)  Would printing from
       a Windows help file be an adequate replacement?
       
   o   Build an R dll that can be linked into other applications to drive
       effectively an R command-line by passing input strings. Possibly
       versions without and without on-screen graphics.
       
   o   Implement inter-process communications, either
   
       -  Windows-style (DDE and ActiveX automation) or
       -  CORBA-style  (real standards)
       
       This might allow R to be called from a spreadsheet or Visual Basic 
       front-end, for example.
       
   o   Would you prefer an installer as well as / instead of the 
       current set of smallish zip files?
       
   o   How important is it that R can be built from source with free
       tools?  (We are not contemplating requiring any new tools to
       install packages, but a Windows-standard interface probably 
       requires a commercial compiler with MFC.)

We would also welcome other suggestions.  Some of this appears easy,
some rather hard, so there are no guarantees that anything will be done.

I am posting this to R-announce to reach most Windows users of R: PLEASE
reply directly to Guido and I, or cc only R-devel.

-- 
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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