[Rd] Private environments and/or assignInMyNamespace

[Ulrike Grömping]

Dear DevelopeRs,

I've been struggling with the new regulations regarding modifications to 
the search path, regarding my Rcmdr plugin package RcmdrPlugin.DoE. John 
Fox made Rcmdr comply with the new policy by removing the environment 
RcmdrEnv from the search path. For the time being, he developed an 
option that allows users to put the environment from Rcmdr (RcmdrEnv) on 
the search path, like in earlier versions of Rcmdr (thanks John!), which 
rescues my package for the immediate future; however, in the long run it 
would be nice to be able to make it work without that.

The reason why I currently need the environment on the search path (may 
be due to my lack of understanding how tcltk widgets are handled): I 
have quite elaborate notebook widgets on which users can make many 
entries. Some entries are only checked after clicking OK, and if an 
error is found at that point, the user receives a small message window 
that has to be confirmed and is subsequently returned to the notebook 
widget in the state it was in when pressing OK. These widgets are 
currently held in the environment RcmdrEnv; they work when RcmdrEnv is 
on the search path; however, it is not sufficient to retrieve them with 
John's function getRcmdr, which works fine for objects other than widgets.

Here my question: Would it be an option to place the widgets in a 
private environment of my plugin package (then I would have to learn how 
to create one and work with it), or won't they be found that way? 
Alternatively, I could have unexported objects of all required names in 
my namespace and modify these via assignInMyNamespace (I don't think 
that anybody from somewhere else would import that namespace, it's not 
that kind of package). Would that be a viable alternative, and would the 
widgets be found that way? Any further ideas?

Best regards,
Ulrike

-- 
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* Ulrike Groemping                                  *
* BHT Berlin - University of Applied Sciences       *
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* +49 (30) 4504 5127 (BHT)                          *
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* http://prof.beuth-hochschule.de/groemping         *
* groemping at bht-berlin.de                           *