[R] GUI's for R

[John Fox]

Dear Gerald,

Although R doesn't come with a GUI, in the same sense as S-PLUS does, the 
tcltk package, which is part of the standard R distribution, provides 
facilities for building GUIs. The Rcmdr package is an example. Although 
it's not as extensive as the S-PLUS GUI, the Rcmdr package might satisfy 
the needs of the kinds of users who require a GUI (and it is extensible). 
I'm close to a new release of the package, which is described at 
<http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/index.html>, where you 
can also find the development version.

I hope that this helps,
  John

At 10:47 AM 12/5/2003 -0600, Marc Schwartz wrote:
>On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 10:32, Gerald.Jean at spgdag.ca wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am not currently using R but I have been using S+ for sevaral years.  I
> > think that I fit in the category of power users, never using the GUI
> > prefering the flexibility of a command line interface (CLI).  In a short
> > while I will try to move to R, that is if we can convince our IT people
> > that installing a freeware package on a Unix server will not damaged the
> > companie's network!  The main reasons for which I want to move to R, at
> > least give it a try, are 1) David Smith of Insightful annonced us a couple
> > months ago that there is not plan to further develop the 6.0.4 Release 1
> > for Sun SPARC, SunOS 5.8, 64-bit version of S+ and as we deal with very
> > large problems, addressing well over 4GB of memory, a 64 bit version is
> > required and we bought that Sun machine for this sole purpose. 2) From what
> > I read and heard R manages its memory a little better than S+ and is a
> > little faster, non negligeable aspects when dealing with large problems.
> >
> > All I said so far has little to do with the title of this email.  I am
> > getting to it.  While I am pretty happy with a CLI I was asked to evaluate
> > a few statistical packages to be used by casual users in my group.  One of
> > the main requirements is ease of use, hence the GUI, furthermore, it will
> > be a lot easier for me to support them in their analyses if we use the same
> > software.
> >
> > I spent the two last days reading the R-FAQ and searching the R groups mail
> > archives, including the R-GUI mail group and as a consequence of all this
> > reading I am a bit confused.  At first I gathered that there was no GUI for
> > R, that R was strickly a CLI language.  What brought me to that conclusion
> > is the fact that on the R-project pages they refer the readers to external
> > builders of GUIs like the R-Commander of John Fox, Brodgar, TeXmacs,
> > SciViews etc..  On the other hand searching the mail archives for the word
> > "R-GUI" yielded well over 500 hits.  After reading a few tens of those I
> > realized that there existed, after building R, an executable called
> > "Rgui.exe", what is that? is that a GUI version of R or not? can someone
> > set my bearings straight on that issue?
> >
> > Thanks in advance for your valuable comments,
>
>I will defer to others with more experience on your particular platform
>queries.
>
>Rgui.exe is the Windows 'front end' environment for R that provides a
>command line console for entering commands to the R interpreter, seeing
>the textual output of those commands and for displaying the output of
>plots. It supports a MDI/SDI type of interface. It does have some menus
>for simple operations (like installing and updating packages) but not
>for performing analyses. It is Windows OS only.
>
>The default R installation is a CLI interface. If you wish to add a GUI
>for performing "point and click" analyses, the sources that you list
>would be appropriate for consideration. If you require a cross-platform
>GUI for a multi-OS environment, John Fox's RCmdr would be a very good
>choice since it is built with Tcl/Tk and is not OS specific.

-----------------------------------------------------
John Fox
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M4
email: jfox at mcmaster.ca
phone: 905-525-9140x23604
web: www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox