[R] Mac woes

[John Fox]

Dear Stuart,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On
> Behalf Of Stuart Vyse
> Sent: January-08-09 10:41 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Mac woes
> 
> I am new to R but have spent a little time messing around with it. I
> am running version 2.8.1 under Leopard OS 10.5 on a power PC and also
> on my laptop, which is Intel. Unless, I am wrong, this version is just
> a bit buggy.
> 
> 1. In the R Commander, there is no direct entry of data. The Edit menu
> does not include a "New data set" choice, as advertised in the Windows
> version.

First, you shouldn't necessarily blame R for failings of the R Commander,
since it is a contributed package and not part of the base system. In this
case, however, the "New data set" menu item is absent under Mac OS X because
the data editor hangs on an empty data frame -- at least when I tried it.

> 
> 2. Entering data from a text file is not always trouble free.
> Variables do not always seem to be understood as variables.

It's not possible to know what the source of the difficulty is without the
files that are causing problems. I suspect that the data files aren't
properly prepared. Can you provide an example?

> Scatterplot and Matrix scatterplot options under Graph are grayed out
> when they shouldn't be.

The scatterplot menu item is grayed out if there are fewer than two
numerical variables in the active data set; the scatterplot-matrix item is
grayed out if there are fewer than three numerical variables. That seems
sensible to me, but again, without the data, it's not possible to know
whether the Rcmdr is behaving incorrectly or whether you want it to do
something that it considers unreasonable, such as making a scatterplot for
categorical variables.

> 
> 3. Finally, attempting to edit your imported data file (by clicking
> the "Edit data set") does open an editor window, but clicking around
> in it to delete variables, etc, invariably leads to the program
> hanging. The spinning beach ball.

Here, the Rcmdr invokes the R data editor, and I've encountered problems
similar to those that you describe with the data editor on the Mac, both
when called from the Rcmdr and from the R command prompt. For example, if I
load just the car package and edit(Prestige), adding variables and rows, and
deleting variables and rows, eventually I can make R hang or, on exit,
produce an error. I'm running R 2.8.1 under Mac OS X 10.5.5. Perhaps I
should suppress the edit button as well.

> 
> Am I missing something? Any suggestions?

Yes, be more specific about what produces the problems you're experiencing.

Regards,
 John

> 
> SV
> 
> Stuart Vyse
> Professor
> Box 5621                                      web:
http://www.stuartvyse.com
> Department of Psychology        Phone: 860-439-2339
> Connecticut College                   FAX 860-439-5300
> New London, CT 06320             email:  stuart.vyse at conncoll.edu
> 
> 
> 
> 
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