[Rd] Useful statusbar in RGui

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007, talepanda wrote:

> This may be Windows specific, so not appropriate for this List...
>
> Currently, when I'm in console of Rgui, the status bar says a simple message
> "R majer ver. minor ver. - A Language and Environment" which I know.
> When I'm in plot area, it says "R Graphics" which I know, again.
>
>
> I think it is very useful if statusbars says current directory,
> because in my daily use I open several Rgui windows in different
> directory (that is, different project), and it is diffecult to find
> the window which I want.

It is not clear to me that information is best put in the status bar and 
not the title bar (which is where Unix-like systems can put it, and even 
where Explorer does, and can be seen in the minimized versions).  So I 
would think setWindowTitle() was at least as appropriate (and so did the 
person who wrote its examples).

> Someone may hope something else.
>
>
> So, my proposal is to allow users to change the message in status bar.
>
> I think that a wrapper for function "setstatus" in
> src/guiwin32/graphapp/status.c is enough for this purpose.

Yes, that has been proposed recently in connection with interfaces for 
messages().  Note though that at present only the MDI interface has the 
option of a status bar.  I think we should move to a more standard way of 
having these 'toolbars' on or off (e.g. ticked items on a View menu).

-- 
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