[Rd] Tcl/Tk extensions

[Prof Brian Ripley]

This is a word of warning to those package authors who want to make use of 
Tcl/Tk extensions.

First, please document them in the DESCRIPTION file, in the 
SystemRequirements field.

Second, people have been recommending ActiveTcl.  The latest ActiveTcl 
releases are much smaller, and it seems this is because the extensions 
are not included so those recommendations will need to be changed.

I am contemplating adding a few extensions to the R 2.7.0 Windows 
distribution -- certainly BWidget and Tktable seem fairly easy to do. The 
only other Tcl/Tk extensions I have found are Iwidgets, which might not be 
so easy (it requires itcl and itk) and Img (not easy).  (There are some 
mentioned in packages which I have not found.)

There are a number of additional widgets in Tk 8.5 that might be easier to 
make use of (R 2.7.0 for Windows will ship with Tcl/Tk 8.5.x).

Ideally someone who wants to make use of these extensions will volunteer 
to distribute Windows versions of them -- I expect Duncan Murdoch would 
be happy to include them in Rtools.exe if the licence conditions allow.

-- 
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