It really depends on what you're trying to do. tcl/tk is convenient in that
support for it is included with R. There won't be any distribution
complications. Obviously, Java is fairly widespread, but then there's the
complication of installing rJava or some other R-Java binding.

If you're doing anything beyond the most trivial GUI, I would recommend the
excellent gWidgets package from John Verzani. It's available from CRAN and
provides a simple API for creating widgets from R. gWidgets supports
multiple widget library back-ends. Currently, I think there are only
backends for GTK+ (via RGtk2) and Java (swing). The RGtk2 backend is the
most mature right now. GTK+ is a cross-platform and full-featured widget
library. In my opinion it's API is more convenient for most uses than that
of Swing, and GTK+ has more features than tcl/tk.

gWidgets allows you to prototype your GUI using a simple API without
depending on a specific toolkit. Once your application matures to the point
that it requires features that are not within the scope of the simple
gWidgets API, you can make the decision about moving to a specific toolkit.

I hope this helps,
Michael

On 3/29/07, Erin Hodgess <hodgess@gator.dt.uh.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear R People:
>
> This is more of an opinion question please:
> When putting together GUI type functions, is
> it better to use JAVA or Tcl/Tk, please?
>
> Any input is appreciated!
>
> Sincerely,
> Erin Hodgess
> Associate Professor
> Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
> University of Houston - Downtown
> mailto: hodgess@gator.uhd.edu
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> 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.
>

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