[Rd] Script editor for Windows GUI

[Prof Brian Ripley]

It seems to depend on the *nix and the JVM, under S-PLUS (and SJava and
...).  Solaris, surprisingly, seems one of the worse Unix hosts for this.

John Chambers once told me that he and Duncan TL had very similar SGI 
systems at Bell Labs and Java display on one was much faster than the 
other.

I hope what Simon is doing does solve it, but I am not confident that even 
he can move the world appreciably.

Brian

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, A.J. Rossini wrote:

> 
> I do not see that as a problem; I've had reasonable luck running SJava
> visualization code from Orca and ROrca remotely (over 1000bT), and VNC
> works as well for that, but you are right, have to pay attention to
> screen color depth.
> 
> Now whether SJava can be used for a stable system is a completely
> separate matter; I have had awful luck with it (i.e. semi-stable
> rather than rock-solid), which is why we've moved to C++/OpenGL
> instead of extending Orca (and hence Java/Java3d) for our
> visualization/virtual reality systems.
> 
> Hopefully Simon has or will solve that problem; I have confidence
> :-). 
> 
> best,
> -tony
> 
> "Liaw, Andy" <andy_liaw at merck.com> writes:
> 
> > I just have one question.  From my very little (and negative) experience
> > with the Java GUI for S-PLUS on *nix, one big problem is that it doesn't
> > work when running S-PLUS remotely, either via X or VNC (unless the display
> > is 8-bit):  The GUI is running, but on screen I just see one big black
> > rectangle.  Would this be a problem for R as well?  My impression was that
> > that is totally the problem with Java.  (BTW, I believe S-PLUS also installs
> > and uses its private JRE.)
> >
> > Best,
> > Andy
> >
> >> From: Simon Urbanek
> >> 
> >> On Feb 25, 2004, at 4:52 PM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> >> 
> >> > That's very interesting, but as you know Java installation 
> >> can be quite
> >> > problematic.  (It looks like the current Sun JVM 1.4.2_03 
> >> has several
> >> > issues, including not working with the R search engine, and 
> >> a warning 
> >> > on
> >> > mozilla.org about its Windows plugin.)
> >> 
> >> I'm aware of the problems caused by various JVM versions. 
> >> Although our 
> >> Java code is not directly affected, we plan to supply an optional 
> >> installer (for Windows) which will take care of the JVM and 
> >> install an 
> >> appropriate private JRE if necessary.
> >> 
> >> > We bundled a version of Tcl/Tk with the R Windows binary to try to 
> >> > avoid
> >> > compatibility issues, and even then I would prefer a native Windows
> >> > solution for this one.
> >> 
> >> I'm definitely not against a native editor. I don't want to 
> >> discourage 
> >> Chris, especially if he has already a working prototype. To the 
> >> contrary - one implicit point of my post was that we should stay in 
> >> contact, since we have implemented an editor as well and 
> >> thought about 
> >> the interface and the features, so we could exchange our experiences.
> >> 
> >> I also wanted to say that we may want to talk about bigger 
> >> scope here. 
> >> My concern is that the number of scattered GUIs for various platforms 
> >> is increasing and each GUI has own interfaces, inconsistent with 
> >> others, making it hard to switch between GUIs. If one wants to add 
> >> functionality to the 'preferred' GUI then others don't have 
> >> any benefit 
> >> from the extension. A platform-independent GUI would solve this 
> >> problem, since an improvement would affect all platforms. Furthermore 
> >> using Java, it is possible to offer the quite powerful Java 
> >> widget set 
> >> to R users, seamlessly integrated into the GUI, thus allowing 
> >> users to 
> >> extend the GUI as they please - using R. (Besides, users could even 
> >> integrate their own Java code with R, but that's another 
> >> story...). By 
> >> now we also have an own, working Java graphics device allowing us to 
> >> achieve really tight integration of all aspects of R. I don't claim 
> >> that this should replace the Windows GUI, but I think it might be an 
> >> interesting, flexible alternative. I know that the project is all but 
> >> easy, nevertheless I believe that we got quite far by now.
> >> 
> >> Simon
> >> 
> >> ---
> >> Simon Urbanek
> >> Department of computer oriented statistics and data analysis
> >> University of Augsburg
> >> Universitätsstr. 14
> >> 86135 Augsburg
> >> Germany
> >> 
> >> Tel: +49-821-598-2236
> >> Fax: +49-821-598-2200
> >> 
> >> Simon.Urbanek at Math.Uni-Augsburg.de
> >> http://simon.urbanek.info
> >> 
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> >> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >> 
> >> 
> >
> >
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> >
> 
> 

-- 
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 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595