[Rd] Script editor for Windows GUI

[Rich Haney]

A personal vote would be to make use of the Eclipse IDE, an IDE originally
written for Java but also now being used for other languages, including C#,
COBOL, and ( unless I am mistaken ) the MacroMedia "MX" product suite.
Although the Eclipse IDE suffers from many of the usual problems in Java, it
is a reasonable compromise.  Over time, as a part of Eclipse,  one is apt to
build in the use of an intemediate layer based upon the use of an abstract
syntax tree or stack machine to which "R" is compiled.  Depending upon one
preference, that layer is apt to be the Java JVM, the new Parrot virtual
machine used in PERL 6, a .NET-type of approach, or ( perhaps best )
whatever Luke Tierney decides on.  So you think of the script editor and IDE
as also linked into the long term evolution of "R" as a language. 


-----Original Message-----
From: r-devel-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-devel-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Chris Jackson
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:10 AM
To: r-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [Rd] Script editor for Windows GUI

Dear R users / devs,

There's been requests in the past for a text editor built into the Rgui for
Windows, from which code can be submitted to the R console.  
Something along the lines of the script editor in S-Plus.  Currently Rgui
can only display a file read-only in a pager.  As far as I can tell there's
been little motivation to implement an editor, as most developers use (the
excellent) ESS, or don't use Windows.  I also use ESS, but the students here
are taught S-Plus and learn to use the .ssc 
editor.   I think it would be a good selling point if the equivalent 
existed for R, without the need to use an external editor (or a hack in
Tcl/Tk).

So I'd like to write one and contribute it.  I've had a quick mess with 
the code, and I've now got a partially usable editor working.   Before I 
go any further and implement it fully,  I just wanted to ask whether this is
a desirable thing for R.  In case there are long-term plans to 
scrap and rewrite the whole Rgui code base...   Any gotchas, dos or 
don'ts for writing this?   I suppose we'd want something like a new R 
function file.edit to open the file for editing, analogously to file.show
which opens a text file read-only.  Currently edit() can be used to invoke
an editor, but that seems to be designed to work on objects rather than
files.

Chris

--
Christopher Jackson <chris.jackson at imperial.ac.uk>, Research Associate,
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Imperial College School of
Medicine, Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG, tel. 020 759 43371

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