[Rd] [R-gui] R GUI considerations (was: R, Wine, and multi-threadedness)
Prof Brian Ripley
ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Sun Oct 16 15:04:41 CEST 2005
On Sat, 15 Oct 2005, Duncan Temple Lang wrote:
> I think it is a little premature to entirely discount
> Gtk2, especially if it is based on Philippe's remark
> below. Philippe, did you try other applications,
> different themes, different configurations, or just the vanilla GIMP?
> and when? While I don't necessarily disagree with the claim that it is
> different from Windows look and feel, it requires a little bit more
> evidence.
My main concern has been stability of gtk/gtk2 under Windows. I've used
it off and on for several years, and it has always been flaky -- sometimes
it works on one computer but crashes on another, for example.
Personally, I have not seen any GTK2-based application that I find better
than acceptable as a GUI, whereas I have seen some Qt-based ones I really
liked. But I realize this is a matter of individual taste (as it seems
are Tk widgets - someone must like them!).
However, as an educator I see a lot of resistance to learning new tricks
without good reason. If the point of adding a GUI to R is to avoid people
learning to use a command-line, it needs to be a GUI with which they are
comfortable. (I presume that is part of the reason why applications
flocked to MS-Office style GUIs a few years ago.) People (such as me) who
are not comfortable with such styles are not in a good position to judge
their needs.
[...]
--
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
More information about the R-devel
mailing list