R-beta: Mac version

[John Bacon-Shone]

>Colin Farrow <C.Farrow@geology.gla.ac.uk> writes:
>
>> Peter,
>>
>> Cautiously sticking my neck above the water line here. I have been
>> wondering about the Mac version for a while now. I may be able to get
>> an MSc IT student to work on this as a project for about 3 months
>> June-Sept. Before putting up the proposal some idea of the scale of the
>> task would be useful. Do you know what would be involved? Is there a
>> preferred compiler?

While MPW is now free, almost all developers have given up on MPW and
Symantec (both have development stopped)and switched to Metrowerks, who
have good academic prices and good onward development.

Having a student do the work sounds appealing to me :)

>>
>> CC'd to R+R for when the power returns:-)
>>
>> Colin
>
>I got a letter on the same topic a bit earlier today from John
>Bacon-Shone. I'm copying my reply to him below. Basically, I think
>that the scale of the task is highly dependent on whether you know
>your way around the Mac API to begin with. As for compilers, I have no
>knowledge of the Mac platform, but in general freeware is preferred,
>if it exists (and works!), because it enlarges the number of potential
>bugfixers. (I saw something about the PWB being available freely from
>Apple now).

I think you mean MPW

>I'll Cc: this one to R-devel too. If anyone there who actually know
>what they're talking about (as opposed to me) re. Macs have anything
>to add, please do.
>
>---------
>John Bacon-Shone <johnbs@hku.hk> writes:
>
>> >Seriously speaking, yes, we really should get around to getting the
>> >Mac version up to date. Volunteers?
>>
>> What needs to be done?  Create an up-to-date CodeWarrior project, or do
>>coding?
>>
>> John
>>
>> Dr John Bacon-Shone, Director, Social Sciences Research Centre,
>> The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
>> Tel: 852-28592412  Fax: 852-28584327 E-mail: mailto:johnbs@hku.hk
>> Web http://www.ssrc.hku.hk
>
>If only I knew... I suspect that some actual coding changes are needed
>for the event loop and the graphics interface, whereas the main body
>of the parser and the internals, as well as the interpreted code are
>highly portable. That's the situation with the Windows version anyway,
>and I can't believe that MacProgramming can be worse that the Win32
>API.
>
>One thing that I have been looking at a bit is the possibility of
>coding up a Tcl/Tk version of R. This could be made portable between
>all three architectures (X/Win32/Mac) and probably evolve into a set
>of R/Tk language bindings a.m. STk (Scheme Tk), so we could have menu
>interfaces and R functions that are call via a button-click, etc.

Another possibility may be to use the replacemnet for OpenStep , now known
as YellowBox, that will deploy on Mac, Rhapsody, Win32 at the very least.
The YellowBox uses DisplayPostscript, which might help.

>[I'm Cc-ing this to the R-devel list. Slightly bad netiquette since
>your email was to me privately, but I hope you won't mind.]

In my case this was careless, I meant it to go at least to the r-help list :)
Please copy replies to me, as I am not on the developer list, I think.

John


Dr John Bacon-Shone, Director, Social Sciences Research Centre,
The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
Tel: 852-28592412  Fax: 852-28584327 E-mail: mailto:johnbs@hku.hk
Web http://www.ssrc.hku.hk


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