[R] GUI support from R

[Duncan Temple Lang]

Warnes, Gregory R wrote:
> 
> Hey Duncan,
> 
> Can you share with us the reason for selecting GTK?  

Well there are a few basic reasons.

I know less about wxWindow than I do about Gtk.  And there is a lot
less to Gtk than to wxWindows.  So that makes it is easier for me to
think about the bindings. (Also, Gtk is like X, and I spent a fair bit
of time desigining and developing S bindings for X and different
widget sets a long time ago.) The additional features of wxWindows
such as threads, etc. may get in the way in thinking about how Gtk
bindings relate to, Tcl/Tk, Java, and other GUI toolkits.  It would be
nice to have a level of abstraction above these toolkits with the
ability to select one and use the same code for all.

My "hope" is to be able to use Slcc to programmatically generate 
bindings for Gtk. This will be easier given that I know
my way around some of the Gtk code. However, if it works,
applying the same programmatic approach to wxWindows
should give us 80% of the grunt work for free and then
require some tinkering later.

Importantly, the applications I have in mind for RGtk are things like
extending Gnumeric with plugins, programming GGobi events and even
add-ons, and generally interacting with many of the Gnome tools
including potentially building a GUI for R to replace the C-level
Gnome code with R scripts, making it more flexible and adaptable.
If we use wxWindows for these Gtk-based applications, we are adding
an extra layer between R and the application that will probably be
confusing.

If we do get to the level of abstraction across toolkits, it won't
matter much which toolkit we use, but will only require bindings to
the ones of interest. The challenge then will be to allow integrating
widgets from different toolkits, and that can be tricky on some
platforms.

So, I am in no way ruling out wxWindows. In many respects, it looks
more appealing - just too big at present. What is its development
energy like relative to Gtk. I am very happy to work on wxWindows
too. There is very little in the RGtk at present.

 D.


> 
> -Greg
> 
> 
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