[R] [R-pkg] New packages pmg, gWidgets, gWidgetsRGtk2

[j verzani]

I'd like to announce three new packages on CRAN: pmg, gWidgets, and
gWidgetsRGtk2.

--John Verzani

1  PMG
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  The pmg package for R provides a relatively simple graphical user
interface for R in a manner similar to the more mature RCmdr package.
Basically this means a menu-driven interface to dialogs that collect
arguments for R functions. This GUI was written with an eye towards
simplifying the learning curve of R for introductory statistics
students.
  The pmg package uses the GTK toolkit via the RGtk2 (1) package by
Michael Lawrence. Some features are

 - The GUI works under Windows, Mac OS X, Linux/X11
 - The GUI takes advantage of GTK's drag-and-drop capabilities.
 - Several dialogs for analyses performed in an introductory  statistics
   course can be used simply by dragging variables  around.
 - With the cairoDevice package, the GUI provides a  notebook interface
   to a graphics device that allows UNIX users to  easily manage
   multiple graphics devices.



2  gWidgets
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  The RGtk2 package is interfaced with the new gWidgets package, which
may be of independent interest to those who would like to add GUI
elements to their work.  The gWidgets package provides a
toolkit-independent API for interactive GUIs based on the iWidgets API
of Simon Urbanek, with additional suggestions given by Philippe Grosjean
and Michael Lawrence. The gWidgetsRGtk2 package provides the link
between gWidgets and RGtk2, allowing the GTK toolkit to be used through
gWidgets. It is possible for others to write a link between gWidgets and
some other GUI toolkit.
  The gWidgets API is nowhere near as rich as the RGtk2 interface to the
toolkit, but is much easier to learn. It is well-suited for simple
applications or for rapid prototyping of more complicated applications.
An accompanying vignette shows many examples of its use. For a simple,
but not trivial, illustration, this code, following chooseCRANmirror(),
shows how to use gWidgets to make a dialog for selecting a CRAN mirror.
<<
    win = gwindow("Select a CRAN mirror")
    size(win) <- c(600,400)
    tbl = gtable(utils:::getCRANmirrors(), chosencol=4, filter.column=2,
      container=win,
      filter.column=2,
      handler = function(h,...) {
        URL = svalue(tbl)
        repos <- getOption("repos")
        repos["CRAN"] <- gsub("/$", "", URL[1])
        options(repos = repos)
        dispose(win)
      })
>>
  Two widgets are created: a base window to be a container for the
widget that displays a table, which has a few extra arguments shown to
indicate its flexibility. The widget to display a table allows a user to
double click on a row and expect some action to happen. In this case,
the handler for this action sets the value of repos. The svalue() method
is used to retrieve the selected value from a widget and the dispose()
method is used to remove a window.


3  Installation
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   Installing pmg requires two steps: installing the GTK libraries and
installing the R packages.


3.1  Installing the GTK libraries
=================================

  RGtk2 requires relatively modern versions of the GTK libraries (2.8.0
or higher). Installing the libraries under Windows is easy. Download the
runtime installer from sourceforge (2). With linux you may need to
upgrade base GTK libraries. The GTK libraries are available under Mac OS
X using X11. (I haven't confirmed that is possible for RGtk2 to use the
native port of GTK.)
  More details at RGtk2's home (3).


3.2  Installing the R packages
==============================

  The following R packages are needed: RGtk2, cairoDevice, gWidgets,
gWidgetsRGtk2, and pmg. All can be downloaded from CRAN. The
gWidgetsRGtk2 depends on gWidgets and RGtk2 and suggests cairoDevice so
you may be able to get away with
<<
  > install.packages(c("gWidgetsRGtk2","pmg"),
      dependencies=c("Depends", "Suggests"))
>>



4  Starting
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  The GUI is started when the pmg package is loaded. If the GUI is
closed, it may be restarted by calling pmg(). An accompanying vignette
(vignette("pmg")) describes the GUI.


5  Comments
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  Send comments or suggestions to pmgRgui at gmail.com.
-----------------------------------


 (1) http://www.ggobi.org/rgtk2

 (2) http://gladewin32.sourceforge.net/modules/news/

 (3) http://www.ggobi.org/rgtk2
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