[Rd] [R] choose folder interactively

[Simon Urbanek]

On Nov 28, 2012, at 8:56 AM, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

> On 28/11/2012 13:43, R. Michael Weylandt wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Duncan Murdoch
>> <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 12-11-28 7:39 AM, Ivan Calandra wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Dear users,
>>>> 
>>>> I am looking for a function to choose a folder interactively, just like
>>>> file.choose() but for a folder.
>>>> 
>>> "choose.dir()" does exist on Windows, so you could switch to that OS, or
>>> write your own equivalent for MacOS.
>> 

Unfortunately choose.dir() is one of those hacks that were added without any plan. Ideally, it should be deprecated and replaced by a proper solution (we have those bad platform-specific hack both in the Mac and Windows camps - equally bad). In this particular case it should not be hard, because the name is counter-intulitive, so adding an argument to file.choose() along the lines file-only/file-or-folder/folder-only (which I would ague for) or adding a dir.choose() function that can be relied upon is possible. The implementation is not the problem since we already have cross-platform implementation for file.choose(). While at it, we may also consider adding a flag for allowing multiple items selection...

Cheers,
Simon


>> Is this the sort of thing for which a patch to the Mac-specific code
>> would be welcomed/of some interest by R-Core or are their good reasons
>> this doesn't already exist?
> 



> Yes, it would be of interest.   It would need to rely on Aqua/Quartz and be written in Objective-C: unless something is done for the Quartz event loop in command-line R (which is not impossible as the quartz() device does so), it would be confined to R.app.
> 
> The main constraint is that we have very few people who know enough about Mac GUI programming (and Objective-C) and R internals.
> 
> It was simple enough on Windows as we already had choose.files (and a GUI for file.choose): that would also be worthwhile on a Mac.  We also has someone keen enough on Windows GUI programming (although he did not last long).
> 
> 
>> Michael
>> 
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>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 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
> 
>