[R] The hidden costs of GPL software?

[John Fox]

Dear Philippe,

I was aware of your tcltk2 package and will likely use it (if the standard
widget set distributed with R for Windows is not expanded) when it becomes
cross-platform.

Thanks for this.
 John

--------------------------------
John Fox
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada L8S 4M4
905-525-9140x23604
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox 
-------------------------------- 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Philippe Grosjean [mailto:phgrosjean at sciviews.org] 
> Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 3:29 AM
> To: 'John Fox'; r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: RE: [R] The hidden costs of GPL software?
> 
> John Fox wrote:
> > [...] (sorry, this is long mail, and I want to comment only 
> details) 
> > By the way, if there were something I could wish for here 
> it would be 
> > a slightly broader set of Tk widgets to be included with the Tcl/Tk 
> > that installs with R for Windows, since using widgets 
> outside of this 
> > set creates installation obstacles for lower-level users.
> 
> Then, take a look at the tcltk2 package in the SciViews 
> bundle (probably, in the next version, I will take it out of 
> the bundle). You have there tile (themable widgets with 
> notebook tabs, progress bar, and many more... and very soon 
> combo boxes and lists/trees). You have also the famous 
> tkTable, and a separate combobox and a tree, and a support 
> for tooltips everywhere...
> Just propose if you need more! All this runs under Windows, 
> but I still got problems to compile it under other platforms.
> 
> > I doubt that many list
> > members would look favourably on the statistical-methods "decision 
> > tree" in MicrOsiris, for example. One solution is to include PDF 
> > "manuals" with packages. I've done this, for example, with 
> my effects 
> > and Rcmdr packages.
> > The introductory manual supplied with Thomas Lumley's 
> survey package 
> > is another, similar example. Maybe there's a better way of 
> integrating 
> > such non-vignette manuals with the help system -- something like 
> > help(manual=package).
> 
> I tend to have the same opinion than John (although I thing 
> that both a good manual, and a better online help could be 
> beneficial): a PDF manual is much more readable than a wiki! 
> Why not to propose PDF manuals in the \doc section of CRAN 
> which have a GNU Free Documentation License 
> (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), so that the manual 
> could be progressively enhanced by many authors?
> 
> Best,
> 
> Philippe Grosjean
> 
>