[R] Some Tips about developing an interface.

[Berton Gunter]

In addition to John Fox's recommendations, some further hints and resources
are:

The tools of TCL/TK allow one to develop a comprehensive GUI. Note that the
Bioconductor project, http://www.bioconductor.org/ , has some packages
(tkWidgets, widgetTools are at least two that I know of) that claim to
simplify TK GUI development by allowing one to build GUI's without directly
having to learn TK. These are referenced at the GUI web site John pointed
you to.

In addition, I have found it useful to build very ** primitive, crude **
interfaces using a few native Windows capabilities built into the R for
Windows version (courtesy of Duncan Murdoch and Brian Ripley, I believe).
See, e.g. select.list, winDialog, winMenuAdd, and file.choose to see what's
available and get the links to remaining features. Finally, I have also used
plain old cat() and readline() for text interfacing. While these would be
considered laughable by professional standards, I have found that they allow
me to quickly build serviceable interfaces for relatively simple
applications (a very limited and structured set of tasks). When the
applications are to be used by only a very small number of users, I think
it's worth considering this approach, as building full-fledged GUI's in all
their glory is a difficult task, as I'm sure John would testify.

Cheers,

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech Non-Clinical Statistics
South San Francisco, CA
 
"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning
process."  - George E. P. Box
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of John Fox
> Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 11:22 AM
> To: 'Gilvan'
> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: RE: [R] Some Tips about developing an interface.
> 
> Dear Gilvan,
> 
> See the R-GUI web site <http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/> for a 
> variety of
> information.
> 
> I hope this helps,
>  John
> 
> --------------------------------
> John Fox
> Department of Sociology
> McMaster University
> Hamilton, Ontario
> Canada L8S 4M4
> 905-525-9140x23604
> http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox 
> -------------------------------- 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> > [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Gilvan
> > Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 2:07 PM
> > To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> > Subject: [R] Some Tips about developing an interface.
> > 
> > Hi.
> >  
> > I just started studing R language and I saw there is a 
> > package to develop user interface called tcltk. I read about 
> > it and I made some tests but I found it a little poor and 
> > slow.. I was thinking if is possible to write a user 
> > interface using java and ask to R to run all the maths I have 
> > and R returns all the results, including graphs.
> > If someone has any suggestions to me I will appreciate, 
> > including other ways to write a user interface.
> >  
> > Thank you very much and sorry for my bad english.
> > 
> > Gilvan
> >  
> >  
> > 
> > ---
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> > 
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