[R-gui] Auto-GUI: Automated Building of GUIs for Objects

[Philippe Grosjean]

Interesting point of view.
- For the 'Auto-GUI', look at guiDlgFunction() in package svDialogs
(SciViews bundle, the R GUI API, downloadable from
http://www.sciviews.org/SciViews-R) + the context menu in the object
explorer in SciViews-R,
- For the differents ways to look at/represent an object, look at 'views' in
SciViews-R (accessible from the object explorer), or to the view() method
implemented in svViews package (also in the SciViews bundle).

Please, note that all this still works only under Windows (but it is
currently ported to other platforms), and it is still in development (not
completelly finalized, probably still buggy).

Best,

Philippe Grosjean
 

> -----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 
> James.Callahan at CityofOrlando.net
> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 2:48 AM
> To: r-sig-gui at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: [R-gui] Auto-GUI: Automated Building of GUIs for Objects
> 
> Developing a GUI for R is hard -- even at the conceptual 
> level (let alone
> coding) -- because there is neither a unique path, nor a 
> unique destination.
> 
> First, There is no one definitive GUI toolkit in the 
> open-source community. Moreover, the type of person attracted 
> to R development -- sees 50 different ways of accomplishing 
> the task. The closest solution I have seen is someone on this 
> list developing an R interface to GUIs that provides a common 
> R interface to multiple GUI toolkits.
> 
> Second, it is not clear what the GUI destination is. Given a 
> clear idea of the destination, R developers find or develop 
> the tools they need.
> 
> On 17-Nov-04 Philippe Grosjean wrote:
> 
> >  2) Second case: I write an original analysis and I want to make it
> widely
> >  available for oceanographers. Most of them do not want, and will 
> > never
> learn> >  the S language. They obviously need a simple and easy GUI 
> on top of 
> > my
> R
> >  function, because they want to run the analysis without 
> knowing all 
> > the details..."
> 
> One thought I have been toying with is that of an "Auto-GUI" 
> tool that would look at an R object and attempt to build a 
> GUI for it. The analogy would be the "Auto-Form" tool in MS 
> Access (or the better implementations of the same idea in 
> Lotus Approach or even in dBASE III). The DBMS looks at the 
> table and mechanically builds a form.  The user has requested 
> that Auto-GUI build an MS-Office style menu for an object. 
> Auto-GUI looks at the object, sees that it has a print method 
> and attaches the "print method" to "File-Print" option on the 
> faux-Office menu.  Auto-GUI looks at the data structure and 
> provides a tabular view (spreadsheet like) view of the data 
> on one tab. Auto-GUI sees one or more plot methods and 
> provides separate tabs for various plots (some more complex 
> plots may be lazy loaded, the plot isn't drawn till the user 
> clicks on the tab). So far, this just more or less recreates 
> GNumeric or MS Excel. There should be a model tab. But, what 
> does a model look like in a GUI?
> 
> To me, this is one of the core GUI questions, what does a 
> model look like 
> in a GUI?   R has a standard syntax for describing a model on 
> a command 
> line, but what does a model look like in a GUI? The now 
> classic MS Office GUI wraps a familiar menu around a visual 
> representation of an object -- a text document, a worksheet, 
> a graph, a project, a photo, a database table, a drawing, a 
> map etc.. How should we visualize models and other R objects? 
>  What is a WYSIWYG representation of a model?
> 
> A visual representation of a model could be:
> - a simplified (implicit, but not explicit matrix notation) 
> equation -- similar to the command line interface
> - a matrix equation rendered in HTML with hotspot links to 
> visual representations of the objects represented by the 
> symbols in the equation
> - a stylized version of a graph -- I'm looking at a GGobi 
> cloud of points and I grab a "plane" symbol I want fitted 
> through it. I twist the plane to indicate I want to allow curvature.
> - a flowchart -- macroeconomic models are often depicted with 
> flowcharts.
> - a tree with  right hand (independent) variables converging 
> towards one or more tiers of left hand (dependent) variables.
> 
> I like the idea of a matrix equation rendered in HTML for 
> output.  I am frightened by the thought of students learning 
> statistics as locations in a particular vendor's report. the 
> student learns to look in a particular location on the output 
> for a certain useful number.  Which is fine till they switch 
> between stat packages such as switching between SPSS and SAS 
> or SAS and R. If students are going to remember by location, 
> then let them remember the location in the context of a 
> matrix equation. The Auto-GUI with an output screen 
> consisting of  a matrix equation rendered in HTML is one 
> possibility, but it still might not be the best way to do it.
> 
> Suppose I have a graph of a histogram and then drag and drop 
> a bell-shape curve onto it -- what should happen? 
> 
> Just some incomplete thoughts....
> 
> Jim Callahan
> Management, Budget & Accounting
> City of Orlando
> (407) 246-3039 office
> (407) 234-3744 cell phone
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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