[R] Restoration of "rite" package of R as R-script editor or the like

[J C Nash]

I will echo sentiments expressed by some others that open source means
"if you want it badly, then do it". But I'll add that complaining about
the maintainer is often misplaced. Many of us are retired and in
our 70s. Thus there is the natural and significant risk that we can
disappear from the R community, even if we would like to stay and help.
In this case, I suspect it is more that the maintainer has got other
priorities, and, as others have noted, there are many, many tools for
editing in R. I looked at the latest "rite" tarball, and the code is
substantial -- probably not worth the effort. The benefits of Rstudio
do, I feel, outweigh the learning costs, especially in the way Rmarkdown
can be used to generate very clean documents easily. And Rstudio has a
large team to maintain it. I even use Rstudio to write non-R material where
I want quick and tidy output.

Do get involved if you can, and encourage students as well. I have been
mentoring students in India and Indonesia in the last 4 years in the
Google Summer of Code initiative. Contributors (formerly students, but that
is no longer required) get paid by Google, and the level of payment is,
according to those who I mentored, attractive enought. If the "rite"
package has useful features that could be rendered more maintainable,
it could be an excellent candidate for the 2023 competition, and now is
  the time to start planning that so that the proposals and candidates
are strong.

John Nash

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: R-help <r-help-bounces using r-project.org> On Behalf Of Akhilesh
>> Singh
>> Sent: Friday, May 20, 2022 3:20 PM
>> To: r-help-owner using r-project.org; r-help mailing list
>> <r-help using r-project.org>
>> Subject: [R] Restoration of "rite" package of R as R-script editor or
>> the
> like
>>
>> Dear Sir,
>>
>> I am a professor at Indira Gandhi Agricultural University, Raipur,
>> Chhattisgarh, India. I have been teaching statistics in my department
> since
>> 1986.
>>
>> Almost since the last 10 years, I have included R capabilities in
>> doing practical-classes of various statistics courses in my
>> department. I use
> the
>> default R-script editor that comes with RGUI.exe for that purpose.
>> *But,
> this
>> text editor is too simple without syntax highlighting etc. And RStudio
>> is
> too
>> heavy for the UG/PG level students who are basically from agriculture
>> stream.*
>>
>> Meanwhile, I came across a "rite" package which was earlier maintained
>> by Thomas J. Leeper <thosjleeper using gmail.com>. Now, it has been put into
>> archives and not being maintained by anyone.
>>
>> At present, I am using the "rite" package for students' practical classes.
>> But, I am facing difficulties using it. Sometimes, it hangs
>> unnecessarily,
> and
>> some of its features do not work, probably because it is not being
>> maintained anymore by CRAN.
>>
>> Therefore, to remove this difficulty, the "rite" package must be
> maintained.
>>
>>
>> Sir, "rite" package is a very light weight editor for R codes suitable
>> for teaching to beginner students, with syntax highlighting facility
>> and with
> the
>> facility of generating reports into HTML, markdown etc.
>>
>> Therefore, I request you ,*one and all who are in control, to kindly
>> make
> sure
>> to include the "rite" package into the regular packages with proper
>> maintenance, which will immensely help the beginner students to learn R*.
>>
>> Or,
>>
>> Kindly make sure that the *default R-script-editor gets the syntax
> highlighting
>> features and capability of creating basic reports*.
>>
>> Or,
>>
>> Kindly make a lighter version of RStudio *for beginner student-level
>> only,
> like
>> the "rite" package,*  for executing R-scripts and for generating some
> basic
>> reports.
>>
>> *In fact, the lack of a proper R-script editor is a major handicap
>> among
> the
>> beginner students to learn R.*
>>
>> Therefore, I earnestly request your kind attention to this problem.
>>
>> Thaing you.
>>
>>
>> Dr. A.K. Singh
>> Professor and Ex-Head (Agricultural Statistics) Department of
>> Agricultural Statistics and Social Science (L) Indira Gandhi Krishi
>> Vishwavidyalaya,
> Raipur-
>> 492 012, Chhattisgarh, India
>> Mobile: +918770625795
>> Email: akhileshsingh.igkv using gmail.com
>>
>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__stat.ethz.ch_mail
>> man_listinfo_r-2Dhelp&d=DwICAg&c=sJ6xIWYx-zLMB3EPkvcnVg&r=9PEhQh2kVeAs
>> Rzsn7AkP-g&m=77JOiaooyKryeIksEwQVRP5LH9Y_sQB2KcKpYzX0bBecHpu80PU7XIAse
>> zOdeLgR&s=PHWFRe2zkqUfCxzHFBsj_cgtliifvk2NvER7KbFnuig&e=
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.R-2Dproject.or
>> g_posting-2D&d=DwICAg&c=sJ6xIWYx-zLMB3EPkvcnVg&r=9PEhQh2kVeAsRzsn7AkP-
>> g&m=77JOiaooyKryeIksEwQVRP5LH9Y_sQB2KcKpYzX0bBecHpu80PU7XIAsezOdeLgR&s
>> =MViP74_UzrLW3Y-aL14PnDHy-ELNxct8VWI5HVu3ZBk&e=
>> guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.