[Rd] Cross-platform function availability

[Greg Snow]

I think it is a little more complex than just installing and checking.  tkProgressBar uses tcltk which works on the major platforms (unix/linux, mac, windows), but only if tk is installed and available.  I believe that on mac tk is only available if X11 is used and if I remember correctly, if R is run by clicking an icon, then X11 is not used (but it is if run from a command window).  So checking may say it does not work (when it does in a different way), or that it does work, but the end user may not get it to work.

I believe that txtProgressBar works on any version that can produce text (all that I know of), but you may get some funny results if output is being sent directly to a file.

More generally, from the packages link on your favorite CRAN mirror, there is a link to package test results that show the results of testing the packages on different platforms that may give some idea if the function works on the tested platforms (if the documentation for the function has examples not wrapped in dontrun commands or other tests).

Hope this helps,

--
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
(801) 408-8111



> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org
> [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of hadley wickham
> Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 9:43 AM
> To: r-devel at r-project.org
> Subject: [Rd] Cross-platform function availability
>
> Hi all,
>
> Is there any way to determine which functions are available
> on which platforms?  For example, winProgr essBar (and
> related functions) are only available on Windows, but what
> about tkProgressBar and txtProgressBar?  Is there any way to
> figure out which functions are only available on certain
> platforms, without installing R on that platform and checking?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Hadley
>
> --
> http://had.co.nz/
>
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