[Rd] Wish list

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On 1/1/07, Robiert Gentleman <rgentlem at fhcrc.org> wrote:
>
>
> Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> > On 1/1/07, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> >> A few comments thrown in, and some general comments at the bottom.
> >>
> >> On 1/1/2007 1:28 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> >>> This is my 2007 New Year wishlist for R features:
> >>>
> >>> 1. Matrix Multiplication
> >>>    Enhance matrix multiplication to work with multidimensional
> >>>    arrays such that the last dimension of the first multiplicand
> >>>    must equal the first dimension of the second. See:
> >>>    https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2006-July/038497.html
> >>>
> >>> 2. Grid
> >>>    - logical-valued function as first arg of grid.edit
> >>>    - transparency under Windows (not sure if this involves grid
> >>>      or just the Windows graphics device)
> >>>    - shading patterns
> >>>    - more interactivity features
> >>>    - safe way to get name of a grid object, e.g.
> >>>         names.vpPath <- names.viewport <- function(x) x$name
> >>>    - safe way to get children of a grid object
> >>>         getChildren.viewport <- function(x) x$children
> >>>      and the order; see:
> >>>      https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2005-June/033532.html
> >>>    - facility for using a name, viewport or vpPath interchangably
> >>>      so that, for example, any of them can be specified in
> >>>      in print.trellis(..., draw.in=...) or draw.key(..., vp=...)
> >>>
> >>> 3. Lattice.
> >>>    - make panel functions generic
> >>>    - allow print.trellis args to be specified in xyplot, etc.
> >>>    - shading patterns (once grid implements them)
> >>>    - safe way to access lattice:::getStatus and lattice:::updateList
> >>>    - allow name, viewport or vpPath to be specified in draw.in=
> >>>      arg of print.trellis (and vp= arg of draw.key?)
> >>>    - document parameters, i.e. those output from trellis.par.get()
> >>>    - support for groups in histogram
> >>>
> >>> 4. Higher level Windows clipboard functions.
> >>>    Since R 2.3.0 R can handle non-text objects
> >>> on the Windows clipboard.  We now need some higher
> >>> level functionality that makes use of that
> >>> to read in non-text from the clipboard.  For
> >>> example, one can select a table on an HTML
> >>> page in Internet Explorer and invoke copy
> >>> and it will copy it to the clipboard in a
> >>> non-text format.  If one invokes paste in
> >>> Excel, Excel will automatically detect the
> >>> non-text format and copy it in the expected
> >>> way so that it appears in Excel one table
> >>> cell per Excel cell.
> >>>
> >>> However, R does not currently
> >>> support this level of integration. (Current
> >>> workaround is to paste it into Excel and then copy
> >>> it back out of Excel.  Excel will insert tabs between
> >>> text that is so copied.)
> >> R doesn't have HTML parsing built in, so this would be a fairly major
> >> addition.  It's a much better idea to write a package to do this.  If
> >> the R clipboard support is missing something that such a package would
> >> need, that would be a reasonable addition to R.
> >>
> >>> 6. Allow attributes to be associated with an environment
> >>> variable without having them associated with the environment
> >>> itself.  This would allow more powerful inheritance in
> >>> the case of subclasses of environment.
> >>> See:
> >>>   https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2006-July/038377.html
> >>> and subsequent postings in that thread.  Any package
> >>> that uses the list(env = whatever) idiom to define
> >>> objects could make use of this.
> >> As I said in that thread, this is not a good suggestion.
> >
> > Yes, but I disagree with that assessment and I am not the
> > only one.
>
>   Nor is Duncan alone in his.

Nor am I.  Read the thread.