[R-gui] Editor in R and Windows focus problems

[John Fox]

Dear Philippe, Duncan, et al.,

I hesitate to volunteer other people's work, but I wonder whether it isn't
time to think about replacing the GraphApp-based Rgui as the standard
interface to R under Windows. In particular, it occurs to me that a
scaled-down version of Philippe's SciViews -- including a basic set of
menus, the Syn text editor, and perhaps an object browser -- would provide a
superior interface. Of course, there may be obstacles that I don't
understand.

Regards,
 John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-sig-gui-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-sig-gui-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of 
> Philippe Grosjean
> Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 4:45 AM
> To: r-sig-gui at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Cc: Soren Hojsgaard; Duncan Murdoch
> Subject: RE: [R-gui] Editor in R and Windows focus problems
> 
> Duncan,
> 
> I solved this problem of R windows hiding other ones like 
> TclTk, or Java windows in SciViews. However, it is a complex, 
> and probably not very elegant way to do it (basically, I use 
> an API function that sends a message everytime a window is 
> created, destroyed, or changed,...  that is ANY window from 
> all running apps).
> 
> Since you are in the process to add such things to R Console 
> in SDI mode, I suggest to have access to the following 
> variables in R Code:
> - The handle of the R Console Window,
> - The handle of the task and/or the process where this window 
> is running,
> - Whether buffered output is ON or OFF,
> - Whether the R Console window is topmost (the new "Stay on 
> Top" function),
> - and finally (that is perhaps a more personnal request...), 
> whether overtype mode is ON or OFF in the command line 
> editing of the console window.
> 
> - I think it should be wonderful to be able to execute a 
> given function whenever the R Console window is put on top of 
> other ones... since this would interfere with the event loop, 
> it should be sufficient to set a variable ".OnTop" to TRUE or 
> FALSE... and the rest could be done in a function registered 
> with addTaskCallback().
> - Oohh yes, speaking about addTaskCallback(). I use it to 
> refresh the object browser in the new version of SciViews. It 
> is wonderful... except the function is not triggered when it 
> returns from another event loop than the main one, for 
> instance, if some code triggered by a TclTk window is 
> executed. Do you think it should be possible to register 
> functions the same way for the TclTk event loop (well, I 
> think this is not a Windows-specific feature, right)?
> 
> Best,
> 
> Philippe Grosjean
> 
> .......................................................<?}))><....
>  ) ) ) ) )
> ( ( ( ( (   Prof. Philippe Grosjean
> \  ___   )
>  \/ECO\ (   Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
>  /\___/  )  Mons-Hainaut University, Pentagone
> / ___  /(   8, Av. du Champ de Mars, 7000 Mons, Belgium
>  /NUM\/  )
>  \___/\ (   phone: + 32.65.37.34.97, fax: + 32.65.37.33.12
>        \ )  email: Philippe.Grosjean at umh.ac.be
>  ) ) ) ) )  SciViews project coordinator 
> (http://www.sciviews.org) ( ( ( ( ( 
> ...................................................................
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-sig-gui-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
> [mailto:r-sig-gui-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch]On Behalf Of 
> Duncan Murdoch
> Sent: Thursday, 29 April, 2004 04:00
> To: James Wettenhall
> Cc: Soren Hojsgaard; r-sig-gui at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R-gui] Editor in R and Windows focus problems
> 
> 
> On Wed, 7 Apr 2004 23:16:39 +1000 (EST), James Wettenhall 
> <wettenhall at wehi.edu.au> wrote:
> 
> 
> >I'm trying to look into the GraphApp code to see if I can find any 
> >clues.  Maybe one ugly way would be :
> >
> >tktoplevel(use=GraphAppRConsoleWindowID)
> >
> >where that window ID would have to be made available from 
> the C code in 
> >R-devel/src/gnuwin32/  ???
> 
> That would be easy to do.  If you let me know the interface 
> that you'd like it to have, I'll put it into r-devel for you 
> to try out.
> 
> Let me know what result you'd like in the case where Rgui is 
> running in SDI mode:  do you want to get the console window 
> handle, or something to indicate that there's no frame window?
> 
> Duncan Murdoch
> 
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