[Rd] Halfway through writing an "IDE" with support for R; Proof of concept, and request for suggestions.

[Abby Spurdle]

I've written what I refer to as an "Integrated Console Environment".
Similar to an IDE, but more console oriented, so suitable for running
scripts and dynamic programming languages.
Also, it's designed to be congruent with the file system.

Obviously, I want to support R.
However, the long term plan is to make the core system relatively language
neutral, and to support R via a plugin.

Here's my (early, partially complete) prototype:
https://sites.google.com/site/spurdlea/java/symbyont

And I have some screenshots, which give the general idea:
https://sites.google.com/site/spurdlea/java/symbyont/screenshots

This biggest problem is that I don't have a fully functional console (or
terminal).
I don't know how this works under Windows, but I have found some
information on how it works under Linux.
If anyone would like to contribute or make suggestions in this area, please
email me.

Currently, I'm simply forking child processes, which works most of the
time, including the Windows command prompt.
There are some complications running R this way.
However, running "R --vanilla --ess" produces a reasonable result.

Also, I'm interested to hear what people would like to see in an R user
interface.

Any suggestions are welcome.
However, here are some specific questions that I have:
(1) What would people teaching R, like to see?
(2) If running multiple versions of R at the same time, are there any
GUI-level features that would be desirable?
(3) What should an outline viewer for R, look like and do?
(4) Should there be a data editor, and if so, should it be able to edit R
objects directly?

Noting that point (4) is contrary to the principle of being console
oriented.

Other notes:
(1) It's written in Java, and Swing.
This was the easiest way to create a cross platform user interface.
(2) Currently, it only supports Windows, very sorry.
I'm planning to have it working on Fedora, in the near future.
Then after that, we'll see...
(3) It's dual licensed under GPL 2 and GPL 3.
(4) I wrote most of this in 2006 and 2007.
I pulled it out of my personal archives at the end of April.
(5) It's badly written, and has some bugs and other problems.
Please don't email me and tell me it's badly written or has bugs, because I
know.
(6) I'm planning to completely rewrite it.
I'm likely to do one or two updates before I start rewriting it.
And hopefully, I'll have most of the problems solved, very soon.

It would be good to get suggestions *before* I start rewriting it.


Abs

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